Something Inspirational for a Change

San Diego –  While the contenders for the leadership of our country form their circular firing squads and try to outdo each other in a quest to determine the most unprincipled and sleasiest among them, lowering themselves to pusillanimous, perfidious, and one might say pecksniffian pronouncements, I had all I could stomach for a while so I was spending some time looking up an old acquaintance.

In Denver, one of my favorite assistants was a man named Tom.  A HUGE, powerful guy he was the ultimate assistant as he could virtually carry the whole grip vehicle instead of lugging case after case.  He was also an orderly at Denver’s famous Craig Rehabilitation Hospital. (He now has become a nurse.)  He was friends with and introduced me to a man named W Mitchell who was a patient of his at the hospital and the Mayor of Crested Butte, CO.

Mitchell had suffered as few humans in the history of humanity have ever suffered and survived.  In a horrific motorcycle accident his face was turned into an inspiration for a sequal to Mary Shelley’s monster and his hands were melted and burned off.  Then, deciding that he would become a pilot, a few years later his plane crashed leaving him paralyzed and back in the hospital.

But through it all he sought to help others, and ultimately became one of the most incredibly motivating speakers on the curcuit.  Many times some handsome dude gets up there to inspire us and some in the audience with real problems and some with, as Mitchell calls them, “mental wheelchairs,” look at them and ignore the message by hiding behind the feeling that the finely dressed, well paid presenter, “just doesn’t know what it is like…”  Well you can’t look at Mitchell and ever, ever think that.  Oh yes he does, and the scars shout it out over the pitch of his quiet voice.

I was remembering about him while thinking about how to motivate some folks with an “oh-poor-me” attitude so I looked him up to see if he was still alive and kicking and what might have happened to him.  To my delight he is still around and still speaking all over the world.  i found on of the promotional videos of him and wanted to share it with you.  It is about 14 minutes long but I promise you it is very, very much worth it.

http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/what_matters_w_mitchell

Enjoy.  And thank you Mitchell, if you ever catch wind of this, for being an incredible inspiration to me and thousands who have seen you in person.  I wish I could bring you here to speak to our students.  Now if only i could take some of that to inspire and motivate my own students I’d be a happy camper.

 

The State of the Union Address

San Diego – I love my friends, especially the ones who can engage in serious discussions even when we disagree.  So of course, the sounds from the State of the Union Speech last night as well as the response had not died away before I got messages asking what I thought.  I am blessed with acquaintances and friends, some of whom agree with me and some of whom don’t but all of whom can join in a spirited, even passionate discussion and yet never once devolve into the sad state i see on Facebook where bumper sticker/cartoon humor is passed off as intelligent comment and where labeling, disingenuous assertions and illustrations, and outright historically inaccurate quotes or events are passed off as anything other than the petty and often vile propoganda that it really is.

I made the mistake with one person that I other wise like but who insists on posting the silliest, most misleading and often openly inaccurate things he has found somewhere else in the pages of his own side’s choir book as if they were valid and insightful comments or “gotcha” comments.  i researched and responded with the facts that countered the ridiculous assertions.  THe result?  Nothing.  He first tried to use the old debating ploy of diverting the subject to some ancillary point or when that failed, excusing one wrong with another wrong as if that made it all right.  So i gave up and decided the general tone of the material there is so consummately infantile that all it did was raise my blood pressure for nothing.  So i quit and now just skim on by such things. In all fairness i have to tell you i do get the same level of claptrap from those on a side much closer to my own beliefs and the same technique as above was just as ineffectual.

So I’ll stick to my more seriously disposed and far less intellectually challenged friends and here try to answer the questions as well as possible given the short amount of time to try to digest it.  I downloaded a copy but have not had the time to really go over it carefully so please be aware that i am here speaking from memory and notes taken during the speech.

First of all, I am sure Obama’s speech will leave most of his disciples in a state of abject euphoria; God knows the man can give a speech. if I were grading his presentation skills in a speech class he would certainly be given an “A.”  But content is often a completely different matter.  Among the rhetorical flourishes designed so that everyone seemed to have gotten a little of what they wanted there were some ”tells” that let slip what he really thinks as well as some items that I believe research will reveal took a most cavalier approach to the truth.

First I must tell you, I do believe the man is sincere in his beliefs and that those beliefs are set forth clearly in his book.  They just do not coincide with mine at least vis-a-vis what is good for the country.

He avoided, in the speech, some of the really hot issues like health care except tangentially and served up more platitude than policy… but overall I think he did it really well.  And in fact there were a few things i agreed with such as a bill to prohibit insider trading by congress (or, i would add, any governmental official). I wanted him to go further and request a bill to make sure no laws from congress could be made to apply to everyone BUT congress.  That would have been a great line and a great position and an absolutely safe one since congress would never agree to it.  it would give him a major point in debates and publicity without having the slightest chance of actually happening.  I think he missed a chance at a safe line that would have been so powerful that even his opponents would have been taken off guard and perhaps overlooked the rest of it.  Everyone in congress would probably have applauded knowing they could then ignore it.  And with that no one could question that he really did want to change the way the government did business in a good way.  I think he want to do that too but not in a way that for me is a good one.

For example he said a couple of scary things that brought my red flags to full attention.  He made it clear that the Constitutional division of powers was a constraint he no longer felt it necessary to observe.  We had  a previous “tell” of that when the Chinese Premier (or Prime minister, i forget his title) was here during a wrangle over some policy or another and Obama said that his (meaning the Chinese official’s) system was so much easier for getting things done.  Whoa…

Well last night he has obviously decided to adopt that approach to simply bypass congress.  Of course with his cadre of Czars he has already done that to a very large extent.  I would be opposing it no matter who was in office because it flatly tosses out checks and balances as set forth in the constitution and sets incredibly dangerous precedents for those who follow.  But it clearly tells how he thinks government should operate: and that is certainly not like a republic

He also made it clear he believes in equality of outcome AS WELL AS equality of opportunity; and that is something I also oppose.  He spoke of immigration reform, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. I agree with a person being able to earn their citizenship but we already have the rules for that laid out on the books. THe first step to citizenship needs to be obeying the laws not breaking them as a first act.  For those here legally already then i would certainly entertain discussions on means for them to earn their citizenship.  But i have several friends here who were foreign nationals that while here as a student earned their citizenship the prescribed way.  I do not see a reason to change that until i hear something better… he did not provide that in the speech but I am open to hearing it.  What i do know is that the so-called “DREAM ACT” contains so much in it that I vehemently oppose that the few areas i could accept are so utterly corrupted by the other that I do not support it in its present form.  But I am willing to talk about how to make it work.

He spoke several times about “investments for the future” as if he, BHO, knew the future better than those who make a living doing investments and studying such things.  I actually believe he thinks he does.  And in someways he actually does: he has a future ideal, the same one as his father and his former pastor.  He sees it clearly and wants to make it come true.  He sees it somewhat uniquely because it is alien to most people who are willing to take him at his word; it leads to a state very different than where we are now, but more importantly, very different than the one put in place by the Constitution.  Therefore i am opposed to it.

He outright lied about some of the energy things but that is old news. His platitude about doing EVERYTHING to increase domestic energy was a great line, but i do not believe that he believes it and his actions thus far make that clear.

And finally he had a throw away line that got scant applause because i think it took the audience by surprise and they were not quite sure what to make of it.  I asked congress to send him a bill to give him — HIM — the power to “root our corruption in the judiciary branch.”  WHAT???!!!  He already has basically described a path to circumvent the congress and now wants the power to basically control the judiciary.

Wow!  Does no one else see the dangers in that?  Even the people who would like to see his policies made law are ignoring the dangers of what then happens when power changes to the other team.  And what about that nagging little thing called the Constitution?  Will those of you in favor of that do this simple bit of research?  Check on the nations and societies that presently or historically have a system in which the leader (whatever he or she may be called) has the power to control the other branches of government and tell me if those are what you want?  It is what our president wants.  How do i know that?  He has said so.

Taken together those philosophical positions overrode any of the more specific policy claims or proposals, even the good ones, since they are directly contradictory and I believe in the power of his philosophical beliefs in which which he has never wavered before can I believe in his policy assertions which he has already backed off or modified.

The Response?  I thought the response was a nice essay; I agreed with many of its points.  At a spot or two I thought it rose to being a rallying call behind a position and philosophy I liked and wished the candidates were openly supporting them or saying the same things.  But in total, it was, to my ears, more a speech in a vacuum and not really a response to the State of the Union.  it did not address point by point what was contained in the SOTU speech, showing what could and should be supported and what could and should be opposed and, in both cases, why.  So i think it generally fell on deaf ears already calloused by the endless so-called debates.

So, there are my responses so far.  I reserve the right to alter some of them after I’ve had a chance to read the transcript of the speech and do some research and fact checking on its various points.

 

The State of the State’s Educational System

San Diego – Tomorrow the Spring Semester starts, and with it comes the onslaught of the issues and problems created for teachers and especially for students by the State’s budget crisis.  So this is perhaps a reasonable time to offer a somewhat jaundiced view of it all.

The underlying official California educational philosophy holds that education up to and including college/university ought to be free to all state citizens.  The concept is based on a truly benign and well intentioned perspective that holds, true enough, that it is through education and perhaps education alone that a society’s real future can be found and therefore, it is in that society’s interest to provide their citizens with a good education.

Most states agree that should include K-12 but California believes it really ought to include secondary education through undergraduate levels at least.   Unfortunately, within that desire lies a lot of places to go very much off the rails, not the least of which is in the definition de jour as to what constitutes a good education.  Whenever the propriety of a course of action – or course of study – can be determined by a political entity then the conclusion rapidly retreats from one based on practicality and even reality and becomes one based on political whims of the day.

Consequently I must openly disclaim that I oppose that idea on at least three grounds:

1. People, including students understand that in this mercantile society you get what you pay for and when something is offered for free the price honestly tells you what it is likely worth.
2. Education is not cheap to provide when done well and when the state is running low on money and education suffers, then the really good teachers are likely to go to the better paying schools resulting, sooner or later in the state schools being the poorer ones in terms of educational delivery by anyone’s definition of good.
3. Since the goals are politically defined then the requirements tend to favor courses that help perpetuate the sponsoring political philosophies over any real world needs and the results are incredibly well educated people who have not a single real world skill and have no chance at employment except to re-enter the education system to perpetuate that which thy have been taught.

I cannot change those goals, they are what they are.  I can only try to reveal them and their results and do the best I can to prepare my own students for success in a real world even if it is not the world my academic colleagues wished existed.  You however, must understand that much of the current budget impasse flows directly from attempts to reach that goal and in the process, bankrupting the system.  This same sort of scenario where one group decides another group needs to carry them based on some idea of social good or justice is part and parcel of the problem.  But for now I want to concentrate on education since it is not only typical but it is the one I have to deal with daily.

A common mantra when viewing and trying to understand political theses and their results is to “follow the money.”  So let’s do that here and see where it goes.  At my school, part of one of the largest community college districts in the state, the actual average cost to the school to provide its educational services is a little north of $150.00 per credit.  But for years, the actual student fees were limited to $20.00 per credit with the rest subsidized by the state in a manner we will address in a moment.  The budget crisis has resulted in a couple of fee increases that, in Fall of 2012 will rise to $46.00 per credit.  You residents of other states can stop laughing or swearing any moment when you compare your own fees averaging nearly $100.00 per credit and often well over that amount.  Remember the state and most academics here really want it to be free.

The immediate problem is that even this new fee hike leaves a shortfall of about $100.00 per credit.  We have about 20,000 students for whom a full load is 12 credits.  To be conservative lets say that the average student load is only 8 credits.  That means the district and state is face with a real deficit of  $16,000,000 each semester.  That is not chump change and all of it must be made up from the state coffers.  So where does it come from?  States do not do anything to earn money, they get it by taking it from someone else… you.

Well most education money comes from property taxes.  The state also promised the taxpayers that if they allowed a lottery the money would be devoted to education to supplement property taxes… unless there was an emergency.  So, dutifully, every year at the opening of the state assembly, one of the very first orders of business by the state legislature is to declare an emergency that allows them to convert the lottery revenues into the general fund.  So with that account now raped, that just leaves the property taxes.

And who pays property taxes?  Well there is a portion that comes from business properties owned by large corporations.  But business regulation has become so restrictive, since Californians see corporations as per se evil, that they are, when possible, leaving the state.  Last year roughly 700 businesses left California for states like Texas and Florida or even Idaho to avoid the onerous restrictions and escalating taxes.  So the property taxes for them went away but with them went something perhaps even more important.

The major source of property taxes comes from homeowners.  And who are homeowners?  Well most of them are employees of corporations or businesses that are stable enough and have the income to get a mortgage.  Or they used to be…

Of course when the companies leave employees either go with them or remain and try to find some new employment somewhere, which today, is nearly always a lost cause because the State is true to its values, and make this a most business-hostile environment.  Those less productive individuals the state sees as vulnerable and to be supported and deserving of help on some level are certain to tug at the heart strings of most.  But by and large they contribute little or nothing to society and certainly do not create a demographic likely to hire people that can buy homes and pay taxes based on their employment.

Of course the CRA (Community Redevelopment Act) passed under Carter mandated that home ownership was a right and so forced lending institutions into accepting mortgage applications whether or not the lender believed them capable of repaying.  So in order to get out from under those toxic loans that were sure to fail they bundled and sold many of them to those fictional private lending entities that are really an arm of the government, Fannie and Freddie.  And now a huge proportion of those unqualified loans have done as predicted even in a stable economy, and failed, leaving the government holding the bag as house after house sits empty (meaning NO tax revenue) or under water and re-assessed for lower values meaning less tax revenue.

And into that revenue void comes a world where inflation, due to the increasing fiat money supply, is making every dollar worth less, able to buy less, and along with it, creating a perfect storm for education: dwindling tax revenues and increasing costs.

Our re-treaded governor is now floating a plan to increase tax revenues by increasing marginal rates… on whom?  Businesses and people making as pre-tax income over a magic number that changes with the telling but lies somewhere between $200,000 and $1 million.  And who does that hit the hardest?  The answer is small and medium companies that are sole proprietorships and LLCs.  I had years as a photographer/industrial training videographer where my pre-tax income approached that amount but my business costs brought my actual take home down, often, to well under $100,000.00

To make matters worse the governor wants to increase the marginal tax rate.  Even though my gross tax rate might have been, let’s say, somewhere near 25-30 percent, once I had taken my deductions, my actual tax rate figured on adjusted income as compared to my gross made my tax rate closer to 12-13 percent of my gross.  The governor wants to increase those rates 2-3% according to his State of the Union address.  But going from 12% to 14% is, in actuality, over a 20% increase in my taxes.  That adds up to a big hit.

I don’t want to get off topic and into issues of what is fair or not here, although I am quite willing to debate the issue in another post.  All I am saying here is that the reality of what the governor is proposing is quite likely going to create a replay of what happened already in Maryland.  There, the state did a study that suggested if they do the same as is being proposed here, the tax revenues would increase by a rather huge amount.  But the year after the new law went into effect and the smoke cleared after tax time, it was revealed that the tax base itself dropped significantly and the actual revenues were down more from the previous base than the projections had shown an increase.

Why?  Because the targeted taxpayers simply left for less hostile territory and took their businesses and often their employees with them.

If that same result were to happen here the results for education would be catastrophic.  At my school we are already operating at a vastly reduced level after cutting classes every semester over a two-year period.  We have eliminated summer sessions and so many classes the few remaining are cutting seriously into our ability to offer our program towards either a degree or certificate.

Yes, tax revenues need to increase but they need to increase through growth in productivity not in growth of tax rates.  Yes schools need to get real with their student fees at least to the extent other states do.  And academia needs to do some housekeeping of its own.

If the avowed reason for education, that is to prepare students to enter the workforce and increase the tax base, is true then state schools need to re-appraise what classes are designed to do that and concentrate their efforts (and money) there and not in feel good “soft” topics that lead nowhere in terms of employment or in developing entrepreneurship.

And they need to get realistic about their faculty vis-à-vis who is providing quality education meeting those goals and who is not.

The rejoinder is that education should be about more than getting a job and therefore many of those feel good classes are important.  I would say that many soft subjects do indeed help prepare students for the real world but many do not and some that could are not taught from that perspective.  Learning to think critically, a very important skill, is not taught by historical revisionism or teaching students how to sing with the existing choir of the instructor and demeaning other perspectives.  I have no trouble with soft classes as electives, but when they become requirements then I think they need to be re-evaluated.

The solution to the budget crisis vis-à-vis the educational success in California schools has now gone way past the point of where it could be done easily and with minimal pain.  If – and I think it is obviously a HUGE IF – the politicians and the people truly believe that education is important even if only to help improve the tax base, then we are all going to have to deal with some pain.

The government needs to get serious about trimming waste and prioritizing its allocation of funds.  Surely education ought to be at the top or very near the top instead of being a poor stepchild to such things as prison guards and Delta Smelt. The governor promised to cut back on the size of government to demonstrate his commitment to dealing with that side of the problem.  The result, according to the State’s own figures, State Employees earning over $100,000 have been cut by 8-tenths of one percent.  Wow…

In addition to the government, the people need to understand that in the short term they too are going to have to give a little.  Perhaps the taxes may need a mild increase but the government needs to make sure that any taxes thus raised are absolutely and irrevocably dedicated to education, the law contains a sunset clause, and, while they are at it, give the lottery money back to education as well and pass laws to draw major companies that hire lots of people back into the state.  The political parties are worse than useless here, the people will have to do something I am normally opposed to and go around them to force the issues against both sides of the aisle.

And the schools have a part to play as well.  When sharpening the axe for cuts they need to look at priorities, a sort of ‘triage’ based on results, rather than trying to spread cuts evenly in the interests of “fairness.”  They need to prioritize costs toward classes and programs designed to prepare students to go out and earn a living and become productive in society and, until things turn around, be willing to axe some of the soft, feel good, politically correct programs that do not well serve those goals.  And they need to look seriously at quantitatively evaluating faculty along the same rules that courses are evaluated.

None of that is easy or painless.  But no less than a continuation of the terminal slide of the California education system is what is at stake.  It is, in my opinion, for each party to the problem and solution, the government, the citizenry, and academia itself to get real about solutions.

 

Who Is To Blame?

Once again I received a marvelous email from a friend asking why I thought the current generation was, as it seemed to them, less capable of serious reflective thought beyond accepting then parroting the sound bites and one-liners from TV or the internet. The implication was that our generation had been better at it.

I had to think about it since mine was the generation the brought us Timothy Leary and Bell Bottoms, not the best indicators of brilliance.  But I do remember some of the exchanges, debates, and discussions I had back then and can contrast them with what passes for intellectual commentary now on Facebook or in the halls on campus and perhaps this friend was on to something.

While my/our generation certainly was not monolithic in its conclusions, on giving the question some serious thought, I do believe we put more of our own thinking and reflection into our conclusions than does the current generation, at least the college-age ones of my acquaintance.  We did not use the verbal equivalent of clip art to illustrate and inform our discussions except for punctuation.  We did not, all that often, simply accept the conclusion of those verbatim, even if we agreed with them and used their pronouncements, if at all, as a jumping off point for our own conclusions.

The email asked if i blamed TV for it.  In the 1950s Marshal Mcluhan wrote that unlike every news and entertainment technology to precede it, TV was the first to have the potential of not just being an adjunct to reality, it had the potential of replacing it.  I think to a large and unfortunate degree his fear has come true.  any advanced technology has the capacity of becoming a double edged sword and used for good or ill.  TV has done both with wonderful educational content and pitiful drivel next to each other on the channel selector. By itself I think it is neutral, but I admit it is perhaps more easily missued than not.

I try to use it, along with papers and internet as resources to let me see what the spokesmouths for all sides are saying.  From the personal experience of being interviewed a number of times and then reading the article, and from watching a speech and then hearing the commentary, I no longer trust a third party’s reportage of either side including the sides they are openly and sometimes shamefully supporting since they will spin it for or against their champion.  I also place little faith anymore in what the actual participants assert and much more in what they have actually done… or not.

I am a stickler for trying as best as i can to fact check those assertions of quantifiable items that allow them to spin one direction or the other. I recently got into a pointless exchange on Facebook calling to account an assertion that was factually in error.  Instead of ever addressing the error as it impacted the argument, they simply talked around it by trying to bring up ancillary issues.  Thomas Sowell wrote that if, as a politician, you want to help the country then you will tell the truth, but if you want to help yourself, you will tell people what you know they want to hear.  it is clear to me that virtually no politician now yammering from either side is doing other than telling their disciples what they want to hear… and I find that frightening.  But I do not try to excuse one side by pointing to the errors of the other.

It is especially frightening to me at this precise juncture in time because I see it as a time of great danger for this country and this society.  Internally we are taking a trend started way back with Wilson to vear off of the course set by the founding fathers and bring it to a critical tipping point.  I wrote in the early 90s that my sense of that trend line was that by the 2016 campaign the U.S. would either be irrevocably on the road to European style national socialism (or worse) or would have turned the corner to try to head back to its beginning philosophies.  I see nothing happening to change that opinion at this point except i think the chances of the latter option being more and more remote.

My students see themselves increasingly as entitled and victimized.  They believe the government owes them something apparently just for being alive.  They do not believe there should be consequences for choices or behaviors; there is no right or wrong for them except for what they wish to have done for them.  They wish only to feed at the government trough and receive the same portions as those who are productive and, even so, they do not want to have to wash the dishes. They are more than willing to buy a sense of security (not REAL security as any summary read of history would reveal) by paying for it with freedom.  I fear that is a trend that may be unstoppable since it is supported by the entertainment industry that is, to them, the royalty of our country, and is reinforced by a government that seeks more to gain votes by dependency creation than a strong country by supporting independence and self reliance.

History is pretty clear on the outcome since we are far from the first to try this experiment; nor are we the first to weaken ourselves from within.  Meantime, as we make our citizens increasingly dependent on the government, encourage them to think the government should control the means of production, and allow our nation to become increasongly dependent on other nations that do not especially like us and cultures whose sacred texts demand int he clearest of terms that they kill us, the danger of our collapse from within is exacerbated by the dangers from without with a decreasing ability to deal with either of them.

So I am pretty much fearful for our future and in some ways a little thankful that at my age I may not live to see us fall apart as I think we will do if we continue on this trend line.  I lived to see America at its greatest and that is cool but it makes me sad to see us in decline and heading for what, to me, is an obvious cliff.

I’m not sure, however, that it can all be put at the feet of TV, though that certainly is a part.  A lot of it must be laid at the feet of academia.  Peopled as it is by folks who have never had to interact in the real world and can live vicariously not on their own actions but on the reading of other people’s ideas (not actions), and who, as Arthur C. Clarke wrote, suffered from having their education surpass their intellect. They preach a warm and fuzzy view of economic and historical pabalum designed precisely to keep the slop in that government trough flowing because, for them, it has to.

Every great autocrat in the last two centuries was helped if not outright ushered into power by the denizens of academia — the intelligentsia, who wished for a savior to protect them from the real world and then were stunned at the results which were quickly and inexplicably ignored by their academic progeny.  I have never understood that failure to learn from the past except tp accept that they had left their students in no better position to accurately review the current and historical situation, much less to fend for themselves in the real world, than they were.  Yet I see it in action almost every day on campus where, if it were not for the blessings of tenure, more than a few would find themselves out on the street where their level of competence would have consequences they most likely would not enjoy.  They have, therefore, a vested interest in maintaining and accelerating this trend to entitlement.

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, government has come to the point where it enhances elections by the incompetent many with the appointments by the corrupt few.  Churchill once opined that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with the average voter.  And even Plato characterized democracy as the rule of fools.  Benjamin Franklin said he and his companions had given us a Republic… if we could hold on to it.  But I think it is slipping through our grasp.  And we have allowed that by allowing our so-called representatives to end up representing only themselves and their own interestes and therefore, to bring this back to the early part, telling us not the truth but what we want to hear.  The first clue was when they first exempted themselves from some law passed on us. Why that was not a major red flag in the face of the electorate can only be explained by the comments of Churchill and Plato above.

My impact on the situation is limited.  I can give my one vote.  Since i am not dead and do not live in Chicago,  I cannot continue to vote for the democratic candidate a few more times (regardless of who my live personage voted for) so one vote is all I get.  Therefore I can only now and then vent and rant about it such as I do here.

But we dying few who would prefer a state of self reliance where Maslow’s idea of Self Actualization was still the highest of our psychological goals, are a shrinking democraphic, happily so in the eyes of most of my students.  They will never know the freedoms I knew, the joy of successful productivity I was allowed and even encouraged to experience, or the  ”rush” of attaining, now and then, that state of self actualization.  But not experiencing it they will probably not miss it either.  The founders wrote that our system would not survive the point where the citizens realized they could vote themselves goodies from the national treasury, forgetting it was theirs in the first place.  We are at that point, our toes are, in my opinion already over that line.  A few months will tell us if we will walk totally over it or draw back from it.

I know which I prefer but that is, alas, not what I expect to happen.  I am not sure enough of us who are old enough to remember those freedoms and joys are still around to vote, or even care anymore. or if in our antique dottage now we also simply want to play out our days with the youngsters at that same government trough.  And we don’t want to do the dishes either.

 

Labels Are Not Issues!

San Diego – There is a sorry screed from the Daily Kos that is making the rounds on Facebook that basically tries to argue that people opposed to Obama have put their hatreds ahead of their love of country and that those on the right are only motivated by hatred as an inherent component of their philosophies.  I honestly would expect no deeper thinking from writers for that group, but I confess I did expect better from some of my friends and students participating in that vast display of philosophical brilliance masquerading as a social network.

Setting aside for the moment that writers and readers of the Kos Kool-Aid (with apologies to Kool Aid for the association) are so blinded by their partisan biases that it is impossible for them to even conceive of the idea that someone could have analyzed the policies of the administration, compared those to historical ones and the results of them, and decided that it was THOSE POLICIES that were not good for the country, what is really at play is a purposeful substitution of labels for issues.

Calling someone a “Hater” or “Bigot” or any other ad hominem negative is the fall-back debating device of someone who has too poor an understanding of the issues or of the facts surrounding them to discuss them straight up.  And what it does, to avoid a meaningful, educational, serious debate on critical issues — skills with which they have, by engaging in these label-slinging approaches, admitted to being completely unburdened — is to take the focus immediately off of their failure to support their own side and tends, unfortunately, to immediately place it on the person defamed to see how they will defend themselves.  The approach appeals on an emotional level to others equally ignorant of the full story and, better yet, allows them to self-righteously and vicariously join in the fray as if they had some basic clue as to what was at stake and how all the parties and all of the competing philosophies fit into the mix.  They know nothing other than primitive “us and them” verbiage and, in fact, are no less narrow minded, short sighted, small time thinkers, than would be the individuals they accuse of being haters and bigots if they had been correct.

In this day and age of sound-bites and quotes taken completely out of context, the media provides ample fodder for such mental midgets on all sides of the fray… and they do inhabit all sides.  That they would attempt to devolve the discussion to their own inept levels is not surprising; it is a revelation, like swearing, of the extent of their knowledge and vocabulary, and to be expected.  What is surprising is the ease with which individuals I would have thought more intelligent than that, not only fall for it, but, apparently only because it is coming from someone they perceive as a political ally, parrot it as if it had any substantive value or accuracy at all.  That pathetic state of affairs is both surprising and massively disappointing.

All sides seem to agree that this is a critical turning point in our country though they disagree on which direction is good for us.  I agree that this may be one of the most important elections in our history and that the stakes are as serious as any faced in my lifetime.  So we are apparently agreed on something.  Then can we not agree on something else?  Can we not also agree that such a serious situation deserves, perhaps demands from all of us, better thinking than this fatuous labeling?  It demands that we do our deep research into core philosophies and their derivations, into the historical record to see what has worked and what has not and question why things worked or not, and that we apply the results of that inquiry to our discussions?

Serious and even brilliant thinkers over history have disagreed with one another and come to competing conclusions which they have supported vigorously but often without resorting to this sort of intellectual immaturity.

So here is the question that will only be answered by behavior:  have we so completely lost our intellects and ethics that we can only attack each other on such scurrilous grounds?  Have we so devolved from the days of the founders, who also argued passionately for varying approaches to this bold new experiment, that we cannot  take our discussions as seriously as they did?  Has our educational system left us so intellectually impoverished that all we are left capable of doing is shouting ugly names at each other because we truly have no idea what informs the other side or to what conclusions they may have legitimately arrived?

If the participants of this churlish, childish discourse on Facebook are truly examplars of the greater voting populace, then it will not matter who wins: we and our country will all be doomed anyway.

 

Machiavelli Is Alive and Well

San Diego – It is clear the democrats have boned up on their basic Machiavelli.  Writing for his prince, Lorenzo the Magnificent, he was among the first to note that in the arena of political authority over a people, “power” was not the result of money; in fact money was a by-product of power.  True power came, instead, from dependency.

It is an incredibly simple and inescapable concept: if you are dependent on someone, then that someone exerts a degree of power over you.  And the more you are dependent, the more critical to your needs and wants that dependency is, then the more power that someone will have.  I personally think that exemplifies true evil, but have to admit that even a cursory review of history shows that it works… every time.

Machiavelli also wrote that although one could rule based on love or fear, fear was better because it was far more predictable and controllable.  Ruling from love was a good way to start and get the people on your side but if you wanted to keep your throne, at some point you had to turn that love to fear.  And once you have established dependencies through goodies or the promise of goodies, then the ultimate fear is that you will take back those things.  He wrote that periodically the ruler should “turn loose his dogs on the people” so they will be so grateful when he calls them off.”

The goal was to not let the fear become unbridled hatred because that often led to rebellion and revolt.  Only fear and dependency was the proper mix.  And his advice has well served authoritarian-minded rulers from Lorenzo d’Medici to Stalin, Mao, Nixon, and now Obama.  But it works better in a demographic that has never known better than the servitude in a system in which the people are required to give their all for the government and to then be happy with what the government is willing to dole back out to them.

It almost always starts with the government largesse that creates the “love” part and then when the dependencies are established and locked into place, the largesse is inexorably removed a bit at a time with fear replacing it.  Freedom is among the first on the chopping block but that is OK for a populace besotted with entitlements; real freedom means you are responsible for yourself and that is something to be avoided at all costs.

it is also important that the goodies must not be removed too quickly or hatred will result.  Instead, the goodies must be reduced at just the right pace to keep key dependencies in place and the fear that even those will be taken away if one gets out of line.

Thus far, in our century and in this country, the fear applied and promoted is not of being sent to the rack, to the acid showers of Saddam, being flayed to the bone by the lash, or dragged to the stoning pit.  We modern Americans are so soft of spirit that such grim effort is not necessary; all that is needed is to threaten us with having to accept the responsibility of taking care of ourselves and, worse, live or die with the consequences should those efforts and those decisions fail.

Whether a Caesar, a Duke in Florence, a medieval King, a Tsar, a so-called President for Life, or as is supposed to happen in our country, a more or less honestly elected president runs it, a government is not a business that produces money.  I suppose one could argue that way back a government produced money by looting and pillaging the neighbors.  But even then the bottom line was that the only way a government makes money is by taking it away from the people who have actually produced and earned it.

Therefore the only money available to give out in “entitlements” or other dependency-generating bribes is money extracted from those who were able to actually earn some by their own skills and/or labor.  Whether it is directly pillaged loot, indirect loot in the form of ‘tribute’ to forestall further pillaging, or taxes, every cent of the government’s money comes from someone else who has delivered it over to the government at the point of a threat of some sort of consequence that seems worse than the loss of the money.

Those old time, “divine-right” kings held and enforced the idea that ALL means of production belonged to them in the first place so obviously what was produced belonged to them but, out of their kindness, they would allow the serfs to keep enough to stay alive so they could continue to work and produce for the monarch.  That was fairly easy when only the monarch (or local Lord who then had to pay the monarch) had a standing army that was as adept at terrorizing its own citizens as it was at toppling neighbors to enforce the concept.

When anything that seemed, on the face of it, to express the politically heretical idea that the King did not, in fact, deserve all of the fruits of your labor was seen as treason and punishable by death in such festive manners as drawing and quartering, it was pretty easy to understand how toeing the royal line and handing over your produce or earnings was a better choice.  But in our enlightened modern world where we engage in the pretense of honestly electing our rulers for a finite period (in theory at least) and, at least in America, enough members of our culture are not that far removed in time from the mind-set that does have some ‘line in the sand’ past which the imperious ruler dare not go lest we rise up in a body and help him or her to remove themselves from the seat of power, the want-to-be prince must be a little more devious.

Thus far at least, turning the armed forces loose on the civilian population is almost guaranteed to create that revolt.  The Constitution does allow for the militia to be used to quell any seditious insurrection but it would take some fast talking to sell the public on peaceable dissent as insurrection.  But even if the ruler did not care, at best it would be an incredibly messy and risky undertaking until the populace can be so domesticated as to offer no more risk of rebellion.

That may take at least another presidential term though I see us, especially after reading the pure idiocy and political naïveté of many of my acquaintances on that infamous social network, right at a tipping point.  So today and maybe for a few years more, our ruler has to be smarter than to simply apply blunt force trauma to the body politic.

The answer?  Create a large enough segment of the voting population that is, or thinks it is, dependent on the government for the slop in its favorite trough then you can rule not through fear of torture but through fear of an even greater horror: having the trough removed.  And some of us have grown so dependent on even the concept of the government trough that we are terrorized by the thought of having future troughs not be created.  They are so stupefied by the poison swill in that trough they refuse to accept the comment by Jefferson that a government powerful enough to give you everything is also powerful enough to take it all away.

This coming election cycle will, I believe, see the most horrific vitriol spewing forth that we have seen in a long time.  Counting on us being a population whose collective brain is numbed by TV sound bites and an overwhelming desire to not have to actually think for ourselves, the demonizing attack ads will just come pouring out and be completely unburdened by any connection with reality.  The makers of those horrid bits of offal do it because they know their partisan followers will accept it all at face value if it comes from a source they recognize as being philosophically incestuous with their own primary issues.

Despite protestations that negative campaigning is repugnant, we have already seen that they will probably be successful.  For a party with only a smoke and mirrors ‘record’ to run on, the only workable approach will be to convince the viewers that those other guys are going to remove the troughs and stop the flow of swill on which their followers have become dependent and addicted. So we will see a demonization of candidates the likes of which have not crossed the public’s eyes for a very long time.

Already the lock-step pabulum is being repeated on Facebook without a shred of fact checking or, worse, without a shred of real debate on issues that effect the future of this country.  The polarizing emotional issues will be blasted at us to garner all of our attention while the issues that may effect the financial stability of the country are avoided.  This group who cries sad tears about how we do not recognize our place in the global society do not, themselves, recognize that the global society is a dangerous place that wishes us ill and is getting themselves geared up to act on those wishes.

They will vote based on a candidate’s personal beliefs on narrow issues related usually to the important emotional troughs in the voter’s life.  Hearing a candidate is personally opposed to that trough is all it takes, whether or not that assertion is true.  And even if true, when that candidate has categorically asserted that they will abide by the law if it is contrary, it does not matter.  The issues facing the country be damned so long as the personal issues are rightly expressed.  Never mind that if the country falls those issues will be the least of one’s worries…

And at the same time they will ignore that another candidate who shares their narrow view and has promised to keep the swill flowing, even when the promises were broken and that candidate has proven themselves to be ideologically inflexible as well as unconscionably unqualified in the economic arena and in the foreign policy arena — the two most critical arenas we as a country can face – may take us further into ruin and vote for them.

I normally just throw away the trash from the union that constantly assaults my mailbox and email, but this last month an article caught my eye.  The core of it was about how, due to the pervasive technology that confuses ease of communication with depth of communication, we are losing our ability to enjoy true solitude.  So what?  Well that author suggests, and I agree, that it was only from solitude that we can honestly reflect and analyze ideas and propositions.  Without engaging in the reflective thought that only comes during solitude, all we have left to inform us and our conclusions is the constant drum beat from others.  And in this partisan, polarized world, we seem more and more addicted to the drum beat coming only from our own camp.

But one cannot engage in a meaningful debate unless they understand the truth of the other side.  Knowing only what a propaganda spinner from your side tells you about the other side is unlikely to reveal the truth.  You can only get the truth of what someone believes directly from that person since both their friends and enemies will spin it to suit themselves.

So I predict this election will turn not on issues that impact the future success of this country on the world stage geo-politically, or on the local stage economically, but on whether or not a candidate promises to keep the swill flowing, promises to feed the addicted dependency or force others to get on board and help support the self described victims and entitled pet causes.

And they will not think about what happens to the country when ALL of the citizens become entitled and feed at the trough; they wil not think to ask where will the tribute come from then?  Whose treasury or granary will be left to pillage and bring home for the trough?  What happens when they run out of other people’s money?

Their answer, based on their actions and posts is, “Who Cares?”  Who cares, as long as for the expected life of the voter clamoring for their place at the trough, the swill keeps flowing.  After that?  Who cares? if the system is doomed to collapse under its own weight but only the kids or grandkids will have to deal with it and not them, then who cares?

We were founded by people who did care.  They cared about the future and the lives of future generations.  They were people willing to sacrifice everything up to and including their lives for the bigger picture of a country.  They had their own petty squabbles by and between each other on smaller point but when the country was at stake, those got set aside, if only temporarily, for a bigger picture.

What my idiot (yes, “student,” I said it again) – what my idiot friends and students on Facebook who have swallowed the moveon.org Kool-Aid, have proven to me, is that people such as those who founded this country… are dead.  Maybe all of them.

What I read, sadly, is a narrow take, viewed from a kneeling position in preparation for the public troughs, some of which have yet to be built, that is pounding nails in the coffin of this country.  But it may well be that the coffin was already filled and you are simply and happily, even purposefully, sealing the lid so we can get on to that great social utopia you think will follow.

Good luck with that.  And to keep your spirits high, do not ever risk engaging in the type of solitude away from texting and tweeting and face-booking where you can discover that such a plan has never worked in the history of mankind’s attempts at government. Thus far ignorance has been bliss for you.  If I were you I would hang on to that ignorance and advise further that you keep your eyes closed in blissful song with others singing from the same choir book.

So keep on singing.  As one of the belwethers among the sheeple you just keep leading them up the loading ramp.  But don’t complain when you realize, too late, what that strange hammer is for.

 

Hello 2012! It Should Be An “Interesting” Year…

San Diego -- Well, the parties are over, hangovers mostlly gone, resolutions mostly forgotten and now, January 2, the new year can seriously get underway.  An old Chinese curse is reputed to say, “May you live in interesting times.”  In that vein I think this will be an intesting year on a wide range of fronts.

Politically this will be the year of the next presidential election.  I think it will see a level of vitriol and issue-avoiding slandering of a like we have not witnessed since the yellow journalism days of the 19th century or the political hardball days when opponents called each other such foul names as to send them both to the ‘field of honor’ and a duel.  Dueling is, of course, no longer fashionable; we do not have the nerve for it any more.  We are so terrified that someone might call us out for our malfesance or defamations and back it up with hot lead or cold steel that we made sure it was outlawed.  I am not here to get into a debate over whether or not that is a good thing or not since I do not believe in the divine intervention behind the “trial by combat” thinking (I do believe in God but do not believe he so cares about such things as to bother intervening) and think the better trained usually wins even if they were in the wrong   But I do feel that we have gone too far in the interests of political correctness and, as my dean is anxious to say, “collegiality” (even if the word does not mean what it would mean if she were using it correctly) so that ineptness is excused if it is performed by a protected group.

Oh well, that is not likely to change.  But I see the outcome of the political game this year likely to take the country in one of three directions.

Option 1.  We will continue, perhaps accelerate, down the road to a Marxian concept of utopia.  I know that is a hard and easily dismissed thing to say.  But it will be less easy to dismiss if you will take the very important time to read three books: “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx, “Communist Manifesto” by Marx and Engles, and then “Dreams of my Father” by Barrack Obama.  This road will be greased by the army of whiners who feel the world owes them a living and/or that they are being mistreated because they cannot finish high school and get a job as a major CEO at a CEO’s pay scale and shudder at the idea that such things are earned over time and by hard work.  They support and will vote to see that end come closer to reality.  And there are enough of them, combined with those who see America as the generator for all of the ills in the world, that they might pull it off, albeit with zero concept of the unintended and unexamined consequences for us as a country that would result from such a choice. This group believes the Constitution is sheer historical windowdressing to be publically trotted out and followed when it suits the purpose, but quietly ignored when it does not.

Option 2.  We will not go that far to a Marxist ideal but will take the leads set by the previous three Presidents and this one, and push us the very short step into a New World Order and a Eurpoean-style National Socialist or Pseudo-democratic socialist state.  This might become the winning direction because it is about an even compromise between those who want option number one (and see this as simply a necessary slowdown and not a derailment of their plans) and those who talk the talk about going back to America’s roots but in fact would be most uncomfortable under a system that demanded individual responsibility and personal accountibility.  They too really want to be taken care of, they want it done just as much as those favoring Option 1, but they want it done in such a way as to disguise the reality of the system that is doing it. They like the pretense of this being the “land of the free” so long as someone else has to be the “brave” also sung about. These people see the Constitution as a living document to be reinterpreted when the goals of the day change which means, that in the end, it has no meaning at all and is of no more real worth that it is for those above who simply ignore it.  They will parse clauses and Amendments to mean what they want and redefine those that cannot otherwise be so spun as to allow their actions.

Option 3. We will take a step in the opposite direction toward reclaiming the country our founders defined, created, and left for us; one where the Consitution and its words have definable meanings that should be the true guiding principles of all of our actions, laws, and national behaviors.  We are too far down the socialist road to retreat altogether back to those principles and have been since the turn of the last century.  But this option would blunt some of the later moves in that direction and allows us to start altering that course.  These folks believe the Consitutiuon means what it says and if you want to change it then within its provisions are the rules by which we can and have amended it.  Amendments to the governing document of our nation are not easy nor should they be.  But it cannot be ignored nor can it be interpreted to suit every new whim.

I personally want Optionr 3 but I expect either number 1 or 2 to take place, and most likely Option 1.

This will also be an interesting year at school as we build a world class program that cannot be implemented due to budget constraints in an environment where program bookeeping is, as my Department Chair said to me, “…more important than teaching.”

Oh well, that is nothing compared to the overt approach at one of our local 4-year schools by the admissions director who thinks cheating is how one gets ahead and rewards those who do it while citing such laudable examples as Kennedy not requiring that voters actually be alive and Captain Kirk rigging the graduation exercise at Starfleet Academy.  So what are we to expect, ethically, from the results of this uber-liberal train of thought?

Do you have any thoughts on it?  Do you have any thoughts… period?

And of course it will be an interesting year because, according to some, the end of the year will see the end of… well… everything.  On December 21, 2012, to be exact, the great Maya calendar comes to an end.  Never mind that if you had made a calendar to last for several thousand years you would not be in a huge hurry to do the next one, or those who do not see a small logical problem in the fact that if you had such a grasp on future events as to forsee the exact date of the end of the world over a thousand years away, you were somehow not also able to see the end of your own civilization coming much faster.  As a calendar maker in possesion of the facts of the future, which would be more important to you?

But it must be true, they made a movie about it…

Anyway, combining the growing demographic of people wanting to be taken care of and willing to pay for that care with freedom, plus the students who are our real future being told ethics are old fashioned and encouraged to do anything including cheat to attain their goals, plus those who think a culture of long ago could set a specific countdown for the end of all things, we are a world in trouble.

If we were truly all as stupid as we act it would not matter if this were 1400 and we did not have the power and weaponry to apply that stupidiy outside of our own little boxes… or have someone else’s stupidity applied to us.  But that world is long dead.  We are no longer separated by castle walls or great oceans.

We are buying into the electric car myth in such numbers as to ignore the disastrous Chevy Volt.  Taking politics out of it for a moment, lets get real in the world of physics.  Here is the bottom line.  it requires a certain amount of calculable energy to move a give mass at a given velocity.  Period.  It does not matter where that energy comes from or how it is generated, it takes the same whether it is from an internal combustion energy motor or an electric motor.  That electric motor does not produce its own energy, it uses energy stored for it but produced elsewhere.  Where? In plants mostly fueled by… gasp… fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

So we have a huge number of people who want electric cars but want to shut down the energy producing electrical generation plants.  They want alternative power but ignore the fact that per unit (usually measured in kilowatts) alternative sourced energy is three or more times the cost of that produced by fossil fuel.  They also ignore that although fossil fuel is used to provide energy for cars, that is hardly the only use for it.  One word (to borrow from the line of Mr. Robinson): PLASTIC.  Remove oil and you remove almost all things we refer to as plastic.  So what, as one small example, will you make cases for things out of?  Wood? Oh no, you can’t cut the trees.  Steel?  Oh no, you have no fuel to run the furnaces and you sure as heck will not be making those big holes in the ground anymore.

So we continue on this ultimately, nationally, and culturally suicidal approach of dependence on foreign oil and the issue of the free flow of that oil does indeed have a national interest component.  But there are some problems there.

We have now, for example, a growing power in Iran who not only wants to return to the glory days of Persia under Cyrus and Darius, but who want to be the force to bring about the final Califate and believes that the 12th Imam not only now walks among THEM (and not their rival sect which they despise and want to kill with the same fervor they want to kill the infidels and apostates, chief if which is the Jews and the Christians). and by competent accounts are on the verge of attaining nuclear weapons which, unlike us, they will likely have no inhibitions about using directly or supplying to others to use while they claim ignorance and innocence.  So what? Well…

They are threatening, because of our sanctions, to close the world’s “pipeline” to oil, the Straights of Hormuz, and we have so prohibited developing our own internal resources to reduce or eliminate our dependency on foreign oil, if the Iranians do that and oil prices skyrocket, a president seeking depserately for an event to take our mind off of other failures, will have no problem this time getting congress to act and declare war… not that, based on previous actions, he would feel it necessary (again, who needs that musty old Constitution anyway?).  We are at such a danger point that only skillful foregin policy will avoid a war that could truly engulf the entire middle east if it happens and then is not handled properly.  Meaning: here are two more opportunities in the short term for disaster: getting into a real war in the Middle East, and then waging it poorly.

if a president ever was likely to use anything, even a war, to cover other failures and provide blame and an excuse for not being sucdcessful, now is his time; and if there was ever a president less trained or skilled to prosecute a war or less likely to turn the reins over to someone who is, this is the one.  So I would not be surprised to see us at war before this year is out and if that happens, less surprised to see us wage it so poorly as to drag it out and help tell the world we are no longer a real superpower and, at the same time, anger even more of the regionals into joining the fight against us.  And, worse, I believe, and this is a terrible position to come to but it has finally happened, that failure and that result are NOT the sole results of incompetence, but of well-crafted purpose.  And the good news for his team is that this time, a single event might be the economic tipping point he seeks to utterly ruin the economy and with it the culture he and his pastor deem as evil incarnate.

The real problem is that once again, no one seems looming on the practical horizon who can — or wishes to — do much better.  Once again, unless something totally unexpected happens, i will find myself voting AGAINST a candidate not for one I really believe in.  So I believe that NEXT year at this time, one way or another, we will be looking at a much different country and likely a much different world.

Perhaps the Maya calendar is right in that the world that existed before its ending date will no longer exist and a new one will be taking its place.  I think that the complexion and character of that new world is completely in the hands of the American voter.  Yes, it is true that we are not the only player on this global stage and other world events are contributing mightily, but what the nation-state of The United States of America does with them will, in the end, be the final domino to either win the game or lose it for all of us.  For good or ill we still have that much power and that much influence.

Sadly, I have, as I write this, every faith that Option 1 above will happen and flowing from that will be the worst case scenario for us as a country (at least from the perspective of someone, like me, who thinks the founders got it right and we have been screwing it up every since then).  I hope that is wrong.  I hope that the person I see as likely to be re-elected will have some sort of epiphany and correct course.  But I do not expect it.

For those, and there are many, who completely disagree with me and still see Obama as the savior, I have to say that I believe this next 12 months will show who is right.  This may surprise you but I hope YOU are; I hope that none of the horrid geopolitical or economic disasters I see as flowing naturally from the consequences of this administration’s policies comes to pass and in fact, I hope, rather, as you will predict, we will see the end of his terms as a country strong enough to avoid any further attacks but not overbearing in the world, a strong and stable economy in a culture rededicated to freedom and responsibility.  But, as close attention as I pay to this, I do not see the evidentiary dots to connect that would allow me to reach that same conclusion.

Like I said, I hope I am wrong but I do not believe I am wrong in this: one way or the other, this time next year we will know. If I am wrong then this time next year the Iranian situation will be over and completely defused,and our country will be unassailably and undebatably on its way to economic recovery with an employement rate exceeding the employment loses.  And if that happens I will be the first to write about it and acknowledge my error.  if I am not, however, will you do the same or will you continue to blame others for the failures of the present?

if, at the end of next year, we find ourselves in an even deeper hole, will you vote to stop digging or will you vote to get a bigger shovel?