A Defense of Education

Idiocy to the power of 10…

The present hatred for public employees and teachers [various levels of vitriol exist for police and firemen, but people back off when they need them] is amusing.  Like we will do better with the lowest bidder and just the basic qualifications [ask the Challenger crew… wait, you can’t, they died because of the lowest bidder mentality in big issues]. Make no mistake, the education of our youth is a BIG ISSUE [a vital national and highly personal issue], and all the braindead commentaries serve no useful purpose. 

Look public school teachers do NOT get social security, DO pay into their own retirement [and as part of most state and district incentives to try and get the best possible people into the classrooms, the amounts paid in by individuals are matched or percentages added by the state and/or local districts], and DO also happen to pay taxes.  Benefits like health care and various types of insurance are what we in the land of actual intelligence and thought call “incentives” or “perks” - those things used to try and entice people into the profession and away from higher paying private sector jobs [which many in mathematics, science, and several other subjects would easily be able to garner].  Those who bitch, whine, misinform, or simply ignore facts [or infuse straw man idiocy into this by using administrators and education higher-ups as the examples of pay and incentive problems (which most teachers would agree with by the way)] are simply the ignorant, narrow-minded dupes the media and political machine controls. 

It used to be lawyers, politicians, and bankers who were despised or joked about, and now it is public employees and teachers.  Does no one see when and where this paradigm shift took place and who is behind it [and making profits across countless avenues from it]?  Really?  IDIOTS! 

Micro and macroevolution

Look, nice though the terms are in potentially defining research or dogma, they are, at their base, irrelevant.  In terms of the universe and the planetary evolution, any humanizing and artificial re-defining of the basic term evolution is idiotic to say the least.  In terms of longevity, the infinitesimal, and the expansive and ever-expanding, these terms have little significance and only clutter and obfuscate the discussion.  The mere fact that life exists here, that the universe has also created, here on Earth, actual thought, critical reflective thought capable of perceiving a distant past and an equally cloudy but obvious distant future is incredible.  Don’t throw math and probabilities at this either, because without an actual other planet with actual life on it that we can prove substantially, any stat is simply a theorem being passed off as a truism.  So, use one word and mean all its potentialities and past, present and future.  Think in terms of millennia not in terms of one generation of life [we see what we might refer to as microcosms (smaller potential models or ones with shorter life spans and more rapid observable rates of change) all the time, and valuable though they are, and likely though the pictures they paint might be in seeing the larger picture, they are simply potential smaller examples of a bigger picture the likes of which very few people can even conceive and are what they are on their own as much as models of something longer and/or greater].  In the grand scheme of the creation of the universe [the great expanse], the creation of sub-atomic particles [the infinitesimal and beyond], of which we are all made, and the processes in and through which, somehow, through billions and billions of years, life amazingly evolved, and somehow in that life, thought, one hopes, evolved, this is evolution and then some.  Open thought, don’t restrict and constrict…

Final Solution

For the US…

Fire all the teachers.  Make education what we really want - to train obedient drones for the mercantile nation and mind-numbing positions, to throw more toys at them, and pacify them with tech and psuedo-realities [career training and customers who think they question and think but really don’t].  Make all education voluntary, k-12, and put it in the hands of localized, regionalized forces to manage as they see fit for their narrowed needs.  Make all other k-12 education on-line, and eliminate the teacher as completely as possible.    

Teachers are now the Number One despised profession/worker in this nation [way ahead of the formerly hated lawyers and politicians and far and above how they might have been distrusted or hated in the past].  In almost every medium, teachers are attacked and no one in his or her right mind would consider this as a future job, so best to do away with it, be officially finished with the money pit of public education in the US. 

Would anyone recommend teaching as a job today?  Really? 

Let’s quit playing like we want to be a wise, intelligent, peaceful, and prosperous nation, and let’s get back to the Stone Age, Hicksville and chest-thumping consumerism and nationalism. 

Stupidityx100

When numerous authors, philosophers, and scientists refer to mass-mindedness, masses, the hoard, the herd, whatever the term might be, often the very same people labeled as these things stand, for a few moments, and scream in a chorus, “I am not that.”  Choral and cacophonic though it might be, the fact remains, the public responds like a wave.  It can be gentle and swaying or it can hurricane force terrorizing. 

The most recent taxation issues, which have always been in the sub-text of our nation, and most nations actually, have ebbed and flowed in various directions, and managed to push some legislation hither, thither and yon, but rarely make any serious impact.  However, this recent movement, which gained serious momentum with the election of a black president, and came on the heels of a torrential downturn in the economy under the presidency of George W. Bush [I remember watching him on TV deliver a speech as the economy was plummeting, and he was bailing out this bank and that, and not some others, trying desperately to stem the tide, and what I remember most was his facial expression and his eyes - you could see either vacancy or a deep concern that he did not have an answer and this was window dressing - he was forced to lie to us to make us feel good for a while - part of stemming the tide] promulgates a response that is both angry, racist, and lacking a single direction.

The Tea Party is in essence like a bunch of cells, each with a different agenda and idea of what it does and why it does it.  National leaders have national agendas which are sometimes mimicked by the local TP, but often many of the nation ideals are misdirected, misunderstood, and patently ignored at the local level in order to fulfill the basic three tenets listed above and regionalize them to fight some local battle, often not directly related to the national concepts [and vice versa back up from local, tribal life to the national foolhardy life]. 

So, let’s examine an issue that keeps coming up, the Buffet Rule as it has been called since Warren Buffet wrote his editorial last year. 

Buffet said that many of his colleagues in the multi-millionaire and billionaire would, based on his conversations with them, be willing to pay a higher rate of tax.  Well, the middle class, the lower class, the TP and the borderline millionaires in the media and pundit spheres attacked him.  Things like “Hey, if you’ve got that much money, why don’t you just pay off the deficit?” “This will cause less investment in America,” and “I’m not going to pay more taxes [a lot of people in the lower and middle classes, obviously not reading the entirety of Buffet’s editorial and subsequent comments did not understand that Joe Citizen was not going to pay more taxes, and could, in theory, actually pay less].” 

So, with this cascade of ignorance in response to Buffet, who, by the way, received support from many of his fellows in the higher end, the 1% everyone seems worried about, and when Will Smith, the black actor, came out and said he was also in favor it, people attacked him [almost the same comments by the way, so it looks like they were cut and pasted], the artificial battle lines were drawn.  The herd also posed things like “Why doesn’t he just pay more tax?”  Obviously not understanding that no one in those tax brackets actually does his or her own taxes, and that tax lawyers and accountants earn more money for saving their clients more money on taxes [things we wish we knew], then it requires a change of law not a change of heart. 

It’s odd that the same folks who are now screaming about taxes and attacking the likes of Buffet and his supporters [who are, by the way, fairly smart and dedicated people, reasonable, and generally nonpartisan - good for business] were, about 10+ years ago [and I saw this because I know a sampling of these people personally] decrying our tax system and wanting a higher rate for the people who earn the highest amounts, with tax breaks for Joe Citizen.  Wait!  What was that? 

It’s like a Robin Hood story.  Wow!  I guess today a re-make of Robin Hood by some Hollywood director would be seen as a liberal media plot to attack the rich and the present Tea Party taxation ideals, and would be met with words like “socialism” and “commie” and calls to go back to - insert country name here - if the director, a star, or someone in it was from a foreign country. 

If, in the short term, to get this country on its feet, to move the country forward, the top money-earners, who say America has been good to them, and if the laws change to tax them a little more, they don’t mind, we have to do this, what’s the harm?  Does the local grocer or plumber think Will Smith or Warren Buffet is going to use him?  Really?  It doesn’t affect us!  The lower end rich and greedy folks in the media, the ones whose book deals and shows depend on hatred, idiocy and controversy, well, they want more $$$$$$$$$$$, so they are not in favor of it.

It amazes me how stupid people are and how little common sense exists out there.  It’s like these people passed a HS economics course with a C, maybe slipped through a government class in college, and figure they know, like they live there, how government, taxation, and the life of the millionaires and billionaires work.  Ha, ha, ha.  What hubris!  Just listen to your new idol, the TV or radio show, the newspaper columnist, and continue to play like you actually know stuff.  It’s what the herd, the hoard, the mass-minds, and the drones do [all in the name of - insert cause here -]. 

By the way, I would proffer a few solutions to the present lack of funds:

1. Sin taxes!  We call them sins [drinking, smoking, carousing…] yet our prices for these items and our taxes on them are very minimal, and in some states, almost none.  So, the people who cause most of the problems [the drunks and heavy drinkers] do not pay a fair share.  We are opening the door for them to use not trying to make it a little more difficult and maybe have them question the expenditure [we’d rather have a woman question an abortion more than we would want some person to question pounding back a 12-pack]. Smokers, drinkers and the like fill our hospitals every day and are the cause of soooooooo many of our health, legal, social and more problems.  Where is the beef?  Raise taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, and maybe x-rated stuff.  Make people question their worth in their lives.  Unlike gas for your car, this is a luxury item that is not really needed and causes more deaths every year than any other thing sold in a store. * By the way, we don’t do this because the tobacco farmer [in the guise of the large tobacco corporations (who have been convicted and in some cases settled out of court for selling more addictive tobacco products in the US usually produced with tobacco created outside of the US and sold to “customers” here)] screams he will lose his farm [not adjust to a new product or anything, or experiment, with some help, in new farming tech or some hybrid food stuffs].  The alcohol companies [think how big they are here in the US, far and above what they are in most other countries] also are not fans of this idea [they want more and more customers and do not want to pay health costs]. 

2. Tax breaks for people who ACTUALLY spend.  We used to be able to deduct credit card interest paid on our income taxes.  We have not been able to do so since the Carter Administration.  So, let’s open this back up for the short term.  Also, to give a “rebate” incentive for purchasing, back-date it for two years.  Allow people to re-file their taxes from the past two fiscal years and to deduct their credit card interest paid.  For this year coming up, allow for the interest to be deductible, but perhaps at an even higher rate, and for next year too.  The people who have credit card interest have credit card debt, and would be willing to spend and stimulate the manufacturing industry, the local stores, the national chains, and more if there was a cookie in it for them.  The credit card companies are not going to lower their interest rates anytime soon, and they are not increasing credit limits as requested by both President Bush and Obama.  Give this tax break, it becomes a rebate for people who actually spend, and opens up for increases in state sales taxes earned [from purchases] and increases in state business taxes because businesses will not be going bankrupt and disappearing but will be selling and surviving.  Try as I might, I still don’t see who this really hurts in the grand taxation circle. 

States get their main income from businesses not citizens, soooooo…  When we cut back spending, people spend less, if they spend less, there is less purchasing going on, when there is less purchasing, there is less manufacturing, and when the latter two dissipate, companies cut back or close, and the state income disappears into the wind and we find ourselves right where we are now [blaming public unions not the economy (and the greedy banks, lenders, and credit companies) and the subsequent idiocy for the problems]. 

Uselessness

Posting blogs here about education is fruitless.  The people who really impact this, politicians and the narrow-perspective, massminds and hypermedia profiteers will not ever read it or be influenced by it.  So, I give up writing here, at least about education.  I’ll post an occasional quote, and maybe an angry comment now and then, but that’s about it.

Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes…

We say we want the government out of our lives, out of our bedrooms, not dictating how we live our lives, and then giving us our freedom, and all that marvelous stuff we spout forth without so much as a molecule of actual thought, and then with the same vacuousness of mind, the same empty grain of brain we vote against gay marriage, promote outdated dogma in the form of legislation that invades our everyday lives, and gleefully jump on the bandwagon of national security and internet controls.  These are just a few of the recent examples of the continued idiocy and “circling the wagons” mentality permeating primarily the hick, backwards, rearview-mirror steering psuedo-culture in the US.  Without recognizing the true nature of their angst, the true nature of their disassociation, and the true nature of their disconnect, the citizens of the US wallow in stupidity and simplicity.  Religion fails them because none of the Christian churches really promote what Christ actually said and the obvious messages about love [real love, the true call of love of each other, peace and spiritual growth] sacrifice, blood, universality, truth, judgment, and more, and many focus on Old Testament and ancient rabbinical thinking [intrusions not cast off from the year 200 and before] in the guise of New Testament preaching and teaching.  So, with misguided leaders everywhere, failures in all corners, no attention span to speak of, the molecules of citizens bounce off each other and rapidly search for a safety zone and net, all the while telling the other molecules exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it [in the voters box, on the blogs, in the comment sections, and in the other vitriolic formats of the modern era].

There are answers, but they take thought and an open mind, so they will not be ciphered through by anyone now speaking in the US.  We are a nation of idiots, promoting our stupidity daily, hourly, and even instantaneously, all over the world, and we think everyone agrees with us [and we, like the bully in school, belittle, ridicule and put-down anyone who doesn’t agree].  This is who we are. 

Rollerball

Not the modern version but the James Caan version…  WATCH IT.  The world of the future is owned, run, governed, controlled, by corporations [arguably a small group or maybe just one], and sports, in this case rollerball, have developed more and more violence to entice, entertain, and divert the masses.  Hmmmm…  The scale in the movie is too small a venue, and today’s version would need something akin to a NASCAR track with people running around, gunfire, weapons of all sorts…  A little like a large scale Coliseum, maybe we can even include lions, all in the name of distraction. 

Okay, no taxes…

The way some people blather on about this is amazing to me [there is a sense of entitlement, of self-righteousness and dogmatism, beyond narrow-mindedness and a complete and total lack of understanding of the flow of history, time, evolution, religion, and more]. 

So, no taxes [because this is the recent gestation, obvious evolution in the vacuum of idiocy pervading all elements of American society today, seeping into people who seemingly had an ounce of common sense before they abandoned it in the name of a name, a new idol]…

No military.

No local police, firemen, county and state hospitals…

No public schools.

No FBI.

No CIA.

No roads.

No food inspection.

No border patrol [that will hit some of these people harder than anything else here]

No health care for the needy [and the elderly].

No government [of any sort as delineated by the Founding Fathers - which again might find more fertile ground with others]

No oversight groups [I listed one, but FAA, NTSB, customs, Attorney General…]

No legal system [courts…  who needs them when there are no police anyway]

No jails

Oh, and given the nature of what most of these do, no employment [for those in these professions or jobs, and for those supplying any of these - the military-industrial complex, that has become the #1 employer in the USA by far, would die, and all those people working on the smallest to the largest items, would find themselves out of work].

People like to complain about this stuff, but they never really put it in real terms.  The “I don’t rely on no government aid” argument is idiotic, because anyone in the defense industry, in any way shape and form, certainly does, and we have seen testimony to this any time someone in government, on the right or left, tries to cut a program or construction.  Protests, mayors, governors, and more folks screaming and threatening like babies until they get their project [a fighter, a bomber, a tank, a woefully inadequate armorer personnel carrier…].  Then all the local businesses that rely on those people building those, well, they would dry up like dust if these industries went away, so they too are subsidized [my tax dollars that build that tank in Louisiana, also support the local market, the auto dealer, the dentist, the barber, the hospital, the plumber, all of the people that live there]. 

Bridges and other infrastructure projects would go the way of the do-do if this is realized.  All those projects, often begged, borrowed and stolen from government committees, again on both sides of the political divide, also subsidize EVERYONE in the region.  Any idiot can see that.

So, no taxes!  Let’s do that.  Let’s rely on what, our natural intelligence?  Our communal spirit? Yeah, great idea…

The same idiocy pops up with regards to unions, and I never used to be a strong union person, but I recognize their value in worker’s rights, fair practices, helping build families and communities, and preventing abuses.  Are they above reproach?  Nope.  Are the businesses and corporate clones behind them?  Uh, likely even less so.  It comes down to this: whom do I trust more, governments, corporations and businesses, or workers and unions.  Honestly, for me, it is the latter, so in any argument related to these, I will come back to the trust issue [and for some idiot private business owner or person who doesn’t see value in workers and unions, well, miner deaths, deaths in factories, child labor, sexual harassment, and a litany of issues that have been dealt with through this process should be brought the surface for discussion as well as the idea that anyone who is a union worker who buys your products, uses your services, or somehow does business with you, well, you just used union-generated money to keep your business alive, as much as you used my tax dollars to keep your business or lifestyle alive].  Oh, and if you don’t like unions, don’t watch professional or minor league baseball, football, basketball, hockey… 

Oh, and farmer co-ops, well, those are akin to Marxist communal farmers, so that crap is purely un-American, like them damned socialist, commie unions and those bloodsucking tax lovers.  Yup, America the wise!  America, land of the free, the loving and caring nation that all should follow… 

History teaches us we need a counter-balance to greed and machines.  Please read more than one version of history or more than one book…

IDIOTS! 

Take me out of teaching…

If time and space would change, and we could back up the present world, the present state of affairs in the United States, with my personal past, mesh them together and make them meet, would I , upon entering university, even consider entering the teaching profession?  The answer, simply enough, is an emphatic NO. 

I had choices.  I began as a science major, and foresaw for myself either a career in biology [combination of field and lab in research for the government or a specific bio-chemical industry] or environmental science [we were then on the cusp of this venue in the sciences, and my interest was to spend half of the year out in the field gathering research data (and I was particularly good at this) and the remainder of the year on delving into the findings and experimenting in the lab to determine results].  However, circumstances opened doors and windows of opportunity, and the flow of ideas and possibilities, the problem and puzzle solving presented by the studies in literature and language, intrigued me even more than science, and with possible careers in either teaching high school or teaching in college, this became my path.  I switched gears, maneuvered into English Literature, and have never looked back.  Mind you, in the teaching profession, there is no subject that requires more take-home work [essay grading], and several times I have lamented the loss of other elements in my life, sacrificed on the altar of education and improvement for others [the students and the distant future of our species and planet]. 

 Now, some soi disant education experts popping up, some even clothed in university degrees and flouting them to lend credence to their idiocy and Visigoth-like thinking, would say that I am not all that good at what I do, I should be happy I have a job, and that I am likely one of those C students who manages to crawl backwards into the education system and then leech off the system and suck the taxpayers dry, eat away at the future of America, and live off the fat of the taxpayer.  Well, as a taxpayer myself, I would have some problems with that concept, and as someone who has a vision of the human species and this nation and its peoples well beyond the pseudo-future of the next 1-5 years, and looks to 50, 100 and more years down the line [as our Founding  Fathers did], I would take those vitriolic and narrow comments to task.

 First, to enter Teacher’s College is NOT EASY, and I do not know anyone who gets in with a C average.  I had to maintain a high B low A average, with a few representations on the Dean’s Lists and Presidents Lists, combined with influential letters of recommendation, an actual entrance essay, and a personal interview to be accepted into the Teacher’s College from which I graduated.  Besides the fact that I played sports collegiately and professionally, studied Latin and the History of Darwinism and my major was English and my minor Classical Studies [ancient Greece and Rome for those who question what liberal crap that study area might be], I worked and put myself through college [with federal and local loans which I paid off without any assistance from some extra program]. 

 In the teaching profession, and it is a profession as much as in today’s world people try to minimize it and put it into equivalent terms with trades and manual labor, I have taught Advanced Placement English Literature, Advanced Placement English Language, all high school grades and levels of English, as well as Speech, Journalism, and Yearbook.  I have a Master’s Degree in Human Performance and Sport, have coached five high school football champion teams, one national championship junior college team, and have coached in university and in more all-star games than I can count.  My passing rates for students taking the AP tests have consistently been amongst the highest in the school, and for the school I am at now, where my students take the AP English Language exam as seniors, having already taken, and many having passed the AP Literature exam [so many of those who previously passed the AP Lit exam do not take the AP Lang exam, meaning only those who either did not pass or did not pass with the score they aimed at tend to take the exam] our pass rate is above 70% with increasing numbers of students actually taking both the class and the exam [for the last two years since coming back into AP five years ago, I have more students taking the test than were actually enrolled in the class my first two years [54 and 59 students in my first and second year back, with over 100 students in classes this year with 72 taking the exam].  So, both the number of students taking the class and the number of students both taking and passing the exam are up.  Students under my tutelage have gone off to all the major universities across the nation, attended international universities, have gone on to become doctors, lawyers, politicians, media folk, and even, yes, teachers, policemen, nurses and firemen.  Harvard, Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, Cornell, Boston U, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Duke, Carnegie-Melon, Claremont Colleges, and more short list the better schools to which students exiting my class and the schools at which I have worked have gone.  I must suck at what I do.

 Some of my students might say I do, and I long ago realized you cannot please all of the people all of the time, but you do the best you can with what you have, and my primary goal, the thing that brought me to this professional career has remained the same: to make the world a better place one person at a time. 

 Oh yes, I have graded AP exams, taken part in a study of teacher evaluation at Stanford, written parts of two books, and have a measured IQ of 143.  So, student-athlete, Renaissance man, whatever you want to call it, I suspect my perspectives and abilities are above average, and I would have had and likely still do have career options outside of working in public education every day. 

 If benefits and salary had not been competitive, I would not have entered teaching as a career.  NO WAY.  As altruistic as I may be, I still need to look after me, pay bills, live the life I want, and work and love what I do.  Could I have gone into sciences and never looked back?  Sure.  I believe so.  Would I have had a positive impact on the large number of people I have had through the work in education?  Hard to say, but I suspect the answer would be NO. 

 I did not mean to toot my own horn here, but I think of the loss to the world, the loss to our nation if more people like me do NOT enter the teaching profession and instead find other more profitable careers [in business, sciences…].  We bad mouth education, particularly public education, decry the teaching profession, and scream about test scores [which by the way are one of the problems themselves, but that is another story], and then we expect the best and brightest to step up and step into the classroom.  Really?  Who in their right mind believes our present attacks on public education, the higher turn-over rates for teachers in charter schools, and our divisiveness and idiocy promote the positive aspects of this crucial component of our society and our survival as a nation? 

 Take me out the equation for the last 25 years [with all I had going for me, and all my abilities and awards, I would NEVER have taught for a lower salary and less benefits in some charter school, a private corporate school or some local school with an equally local and narrowed perspective the likes of which are festering like a plague and receiving political accolades and support for mostly partisan reasons].  Take all those who saw this as a viable future, and did not enter another professional field, out of the national education picture for the last 25 years, and woe be unto us.  We would be the least educated nation amongst the so-called developed nations.  We would be a nation of hicks and idiots, more so than many argue we already are today [the reasons for that are also worthy of discussion and do relate to education, but not test scores…].  If we are flailing about now, steering our best people away [directly and indirectly] from pursuing teaching as a career, then what do we expect for a future? 

 Should public education be free from criticism and scrutiny?  NO.  Should politicized ideals thrown into education and its attached components be free from criticism and scrutiny?  NO.  Should politicized agendas be scaled back and/or removed from the education debate and the repairs to education?  YES!  A greater vision, a longer-term vision is needed than politics and politicking allow.  Education is not dogma.  It is not political parties and theocratic ideals.  It is about mining minds, enhancing the natural curiosity of children, engendering innovation and creativity and accepting the nature of error and learning from error [our best discoveries have been made through trial and error, learning from our mistakes].  Our present public school system, our present NCLB legislation [as much as it mimics this], and our apparent national infatuations do nothing to actually stimulate these natural and requisite behaviors. 

 The answer for our communal and vital future is not in isolationist and regionalist thinking through magnet, charter or private [or corporate non-profit – someone makes money somewhere, so don’t fool yourself] schools.  These are mere symptoms of the lack of sincere and inspired vision and leadership in education and the nation.  Without a proper perspective of our distant future, without considering the vastness of tomorrow and the richness of the past, without looking past prejudices and bottom lines, we are doomed to deeper and deeper divisions and crises.  We have not had leadership, true leadership, in this nation for over 30 years.  It shows.  We are in ruin, and we are floundering in search of a way out, and in that situation we will take any preserver or seeming lifesaver thrown at us, but in many cases lead weights and concrete blocks are being thrown at us in the guise of vests and lifeboats.  These obstacles to our future must be cast aside and we must stand united as a nation, as a people, to look hard and aggressively at our education goals, objectives, measures, and leadership.  We need to take the stand our politicians will not [trashing some things that do us damage, standing against those who would nullify the gains and growth of our systems since the days of our Founders and would privatize most or all of the education system for some strange gain or motive (deepening class and social divides), and put our money where our mouths are – the future and our children].  It may take time to re-educate and adjust the narrowed perspectives of many lost Americans, but it can and MUST be done. 

 P. S.  I am not a great teacher, and I am not an idiot teacher.  I suspect I am more in the middle, somewhere in the mix, and none of this is for some personal glory, but consider that if I am in the middle somewhere and all those teachers above and beyond me also had options, and it would be foolish to think otherwise, then take them out of the education equation, and consider what happens…

Just don’t look [or listen]

Here’s my wish, dream, whatever…

That everyone is the US simply turn off their computers, turn off their televisions, radios, and other devices through which they gather opinions [often passed off as facts and hand-in-hand with some sort of fear, hatred, or idiocy] and graft them unto their heart, mind and spirit.  Turn them all off!  Do it for at least a day…  Just don’t look, listen, or turn the damned things on.  THINK FOR YOURSELF!  TALK TO PEOPLE!  LAUGH with each other!  PLAY! READ a GOOD book, a CLASSIC or one that’s FUN [not some vitriolic psuedo-political crap sold as “news”].  DANCE!  SING!  If you don’t like singing in public, take an extended shower, and SING, sing, sing! 

As my old aunt used to say, “Go outside and get the stink blown off you.” 

If you can do it for more than a day, perhaps for three days or a week, all the more power to you.  I suspect it will provide a spiritual cleansing. 

If every American would do this, our problems would start to decrease, we might, just might, see our way clear to actually caring about each other and being a people we keep bragging we are [it gets louder and louder, so I suspect it is becoming less and less true - actions speak louder than words, so we can see where this goes]. 

PLEASE!  I BEG YOU!  I am off here, off the computer, off the TV, off the cell, off ALL technology for the rest of this week [it is Tuesday].  I am going to hike, play with my dogs, garden, sit outside and just relax with an ice cold glass of water, and watch the sunset, and then I will go read a book that challenges my mind, my spirit, and makes me question and think. 

Peace be with you all!