America - The Middle Schooler

I’ve really just had enough. I cannot fathom what the citizens of this country and its leaders are actually thinking. I get that Angelina and Brad’s baby is like the number one most important thing in our nation, the fact that she is opting to give birth amongst lions in Africa is of the utmost importance, and of course, how Jen will handle it. I get that. I also get that no matter what immigrants do right now, the rightwing will have something ludicrous, condescending and racist to say about it. But does anyone see what’s going on? I mean, a lot of attention has been spent on people who are here, doing back-breaking work, busting their butts for minimum wage, who have the audacity to have national pride by waving the Mexican and US flags (I know quite a few Brits who wave the Union Jack but no ones says anything about their allegiance to this country). The fact that they organized has been minimized as kids wanting to ditch school, and lied about with the ridiculous statements that this is a demonstration organized by communists. Give me a break. When in doubt call someone a communist! Call them a socialist! Marxist! Gets’em every time. God forbid we actually give credit to these people for caring about what happens to them and they organize to be heard. But does anyone notice that the price of gas has jumped again and they are trying to groom us like a pedophile grooms a child for three dollar gas – just in time for summer driving!

Bill and Melinda Gates have been sounding the alarm about our schools being in crisis. With a former teacher/librarian/Stepford wife in the White House one would think that education would be on the top of the agenda, but no, we are way too busy stirring everyone up. Give me a break on this whole Iran thing. Been there done that. When your popularity drops here comes a war! Get a new script. Something with a little punch, a little creativity. I know! Here’s an idea! How about we stop acting like big freakin’ bullies, trampling all over everyone’s cultural tenets, other countries inherent rights to be as they are, demeaning and dehumanizing entire regions of people because we just don’t get what they’re all about and frankly, don’t give a crap because they aren’t acting like we want them to.

Bush refuses to talk to anyone who disagrees with him or that has made him mad.

Seriously. He will not talk to North Korea. In the summer of 2003, the former Sunni generals and Sunni and Baathist leaders who were happy to see Saddam go, but did not want America there, wanted to talk to us. Bush wouldn't. Whether it got to bush, who knows but it got to four star generals. Nobody wanted to talk to them. He doesn't talk to the president of Syria; in fact, he specifically rejects overtures from al-Asad to us. And he doesn't talk to the Iranians. There's been no bilateral communication at all. Iran has come hat-in-hand to us. A former National Security Council adviser who worked in the White House, Flynt Leverett, an ex-C.I.A. analyst who's now working at Brookings, wrote a piece a month or so ago, in the New York Times, describing specific offers by the Iranians to come deal on all issues. They were even willing to talk about recognizing Israel. And the White House doesn't talk. There's no pressure from the media, no pressure from Congress. Here's a president who won't talk to people he's walking us into a confrontation with. Is that insane? He refuses to talk to them.

Wow.

He’s like a spoiled child. The problem is he’s not a child and he has a crapload of power that he is abusing. How many more wars are we going to engage in? How about bringing democracy to the region as a GIFT instead of a freakin’ mandate?

Did you know we are 26^th in the world in educating our kids?

26^th.

A third of all kids drop out of school before graduating. Our schools are falling apart. And we march on to war in a country that we know little to nothing about. Except that it was soooooo much better, and more civilized under the American friendly puppet know as the Shah. But the people WHO LIVE there got rid of him in ’79. It’s over. Let it go. Let them be as they are. Why do we have to run around flippin’ out over everything? Why is every other country so level headed about all this? Can we get some grownups in to work out our problems, please?

In a multicultural world, in a multicultural country we have got to grow up and stop painting people with simplistically broad and erroneous strokes. Do you have any concept of how many people have said to me that Middle Eastern people don’t want to be called “towel heads” anymore, they want to be called “sheet heads”? God.

Do people really find that funny? Really? In 2006 we are still making up stupid stereotypical slams against entire groups of people? Why are we backsliding? Why are behaving like this? People who are reasonable, have what’s good and right and true on their side, don’t do this. People who are wrong, know they’re wrong and feel guilty because of it behave like this. We see it time and time again at protests or outreach events. People who get all adamant, confrontational and angry. “Go rodeo!” “I love beef!” “They’re just chickens!” they screech at us. And it is so painfully obvious that the self-righteous are not right, they are just loud, obnoxious and pathetic. Even our friends, the other countries that “like” us are wondering what the heck we’re doing. Can someone that bush likes (so he will talk and maybe even listen) please sit down and talk to him about the best way to deal with the Middle East? Please?

Why are we treating those from Central and South America as criminals? You tell me, and you have to make some effort to be honest and actually think about yourself in the situation, what would you do if you lived in a cardboard home, with scraps of metal stuck to the top as a roof. You slept in dirt with a few blankets. You were born into this. You are hard working. You are motivated. And you are fiercely loyal to your family. Wouldn’t you do everything in your power to get to a place where you could work for more money, enough money to send back to your family? You so would, and you know it! I don’t believe that they are illegal immigrants. America is a continent. We should all be able to move around freely. How many South and Central American people are involved in acts of terrorism? What about the ones from within? It’s the Timothy McVeigh’s that you have to worry about, and guess what? They’re the ones that got the militias together and are patrolling the border. Great. The funny thing is, all these people who claim to know something about history refuse to concede that every single time we have had a wave of immigrants into this country the alarmist started wiggin’ out about the deterioration of our country’s fabric. Jews. Irish. Germans. Polish. Russians. Every single time. Initially, they had ghettos. They refused to speak English. There was an adaptation period. All this BS hysteria about our country becoming a welfare state, a bankrupt health care system and dilapidated schools if we remain “as is” or grant amnesty to those already here is nuts. A) people come over here to work. They pay taxes and usually don’t get anything back. They contribute to our society. B) the health care system in our country is already out of control – when you have seniors who have worked their entire lives, paying $700 a month for insurance because they have had cancer probably from the toxins and crap that’s allowed to flow freely through our waterways, air and land and have to pay $6000 for each treatment they get for some experimental treatment – our system is broken. Don’t tell me it’s not when we have kids dying from asthma in this country. ASTHMA! And C) Our educational system is pathetic. We have kids graduating in the top ten percent of their class, not prepared for college. All these right-wingers attacking the universities for the “liberal” professors have once again missed the boat. The average minority senior in high school who stays in school and is a good student is able to read at the same level as a seventh grade white kid. Those living in the vicinity of poverty get the most atrocious rip off. They are basically handicapped from the onset. The disparity in the schools is absolutely shocking. There is no other way to put it. I saw this coming in, and that’s why I am forced to live where I live. In this ultra-conservative bastion. I want my boys to get a good education. If we were to live where I wanted to live, the curriculum would be a breeze, but their college readiness would not exist.

This is the truth about America. You have a bunch of people who sit around judging others without the first idea of what they are talking about. Enough comparing to when you were in school, ok? That does not apply anymore. For one, your mom probably stayed at home and TALKED to you. Kids today are alone a lot of the time when they get home. You didn’t have the internet, where creeps are searching all day long for some sad kid who just wants someone to notice, to care about them. You didn’t have all the distractions, and sure! You were happy! You didn’t have all these things and you managed, blah blah blah. You are also white, and regardless of what you say, the actual facts about education in predominantly minority areas and white areas makes it indisputable – racism is alive and kicking in our educational system. What’s the standard response to that? They don’t try as hard, they don’t care, they aren’t motivated, etc. Try going in day in day out to a school with a ceiling that is falling to the ground, peeling walls, blocked off bathrooms because of the need for repairs that never come, no electricity, broken windows, substandard equipment. Walk in, get frisked and go through a metal detector. What a way to start your day! The exceptions set the rules. You are surrounded by bleak, dull, broken, rundown all day long. What does that say to you? That this is what you deserve? This is the best we will do for you, because well, we don’t expect a whole lot. We are not losing our youth to music videos, video games, reality (gag) dramas like Laguna Beach, and other external diversions because these kids are stupid, uninspired, or delinquent. Have you seen any of these things? The videos and reality shows are about opulence and excess, something that most of these kids dive into in order to escape their reality. These things are interesting. They are engaging. They are interactive, fun and inspiring. Why are we not clued into this? One of the current problems we have in our schools is that teachers are being forced to teach to a test. Teachers don’t teach for kids to learn –that is why art and music are falling by the wayside – no Mozart or Monet on the standardized test. Every single shred of creativity and fun is zapped out in order for the kids to “sit and learn this stuff”. The school’s accreditation, the staff’s jobs all rely on how well these kids do on the tests. And who do we have to thank for all this? The guy who governed this state and felt it was a good idea, so good we would inflict it on the whole country. This is what I think. If you aren’t involved in the education system, if you weren’t all that good at it when you went through it, I don’t think you should be making decisions about what it needs to be better. All it does is distract away from the fact that our schools and curriculum, applicable to the 50’s are seriously lacking now in 2006. In order to be competitive (upon which I am assuming the whole “free market” premise is based) you have to have people who are creative intellectually. You have to have people in positions that continue to drive this country. At the rate we are going, our youth will be in fierce competition with the migrant workers for the unskilled labor positions.

Do we blame the kids? Do we blame the leadership? No. And yes. But not just the idiot we have now, but all the guys that have managed to drop this ball. Education has floated in and out of our collective psyche for at least thirty years. Time magazine feels it’s worthy enough for a cover. Does it matter? Can we ignore it? If your kid is in a good school does that mean this doesn’t affect you? You can let it pass? What if you don’t have kids? What if your kids are grown and you aren’t integrally involved with the school system, does all this matter? Well, think of it in this way; who will be operating on you when you need emergency surgery? Who will be designing your car? Your freeways? Your home or work space? Who will be building it? Who will be representing you should you have legal difficulties? Who will be caring for you when you cannot care for yourself? Think of all the ways that a good education affects your existence from moment to moment. Then think of all the kids we allowed to drop out of school, to graduate with a substandard education, and then let’s start talking about a welfare state, because that’s when we’ll have one, not now with the current immigration situation but soon with all these kids falling through the cracks. Why do we insist on waiting until it’s too late to correct problems? Why do we collectively run around putting out fires instead of preparing our surrounding to be fire-free? We’re smart enough. It’s not a partisan issue – we all want to be proud of the education we offer kids – liberals, conservatives, right, left, dems, repubs, green, independent – we all want to walk into any school and see kids learning, equipment in good condition, the walls painted and decorated with school spirit, the windows clean, the bathrooms operational, the ceiling keeping out the rain. Don’t we? I know we do. So, what’s the problem?

We are focusing way too much attention on everyone else. I really like that parable in the bible about the guy who needed to concentrate on the log in his own eye before pointing out the splinter in someone else’s. Isn’t that really relevant right now? With systems in place that are in dire need of attention and renovation, not inconsequential systems but vitally important ones like education and health, it is imperative that we focus on our own structural soundness. Take our voting system (please! Harhar). Electronic voting machines are highly corruptible. That’s a fundamental element in a democracy – accurate voting. We don’t have that. Can we get it? We have people leaving their kids at home because we have shut down daycare programs for the needy. Is this the best solution to this problem? We have so many things for which we could be setting the world standard – becoming energy independent, having the most forward thinking approaches to clean air, water and land, developing levees that other countries come to see so that they can emulate. Figuring out creative, “outside the box” ways to solve issues such as immigration, cultural awareness, tolerance, poverty, illiteracy, the right to exercise your religion. Isn’t that what we all want? Everyone in the world looking at us thinking “that’s what we should be doing!” “How do we ____?”fill in the blank. Instead we are the ones running around the world bragging and swaggering and essentially acting like a bunch of ridiculous middle school kids. But the thing is, compared to the rest of the world, that’s about where we are in our nation’s growth. We are not doomed to be a**holes for the rest of eternity. How you are in middle school isn’t how you are as an adult IF you learn from your mistakes and realize that you are part of the whole, not the be all and end all. We are not at our best right now, but that is ok because we still have an opportunity to change. I think America has always wanted to be respected, maybe even envied a little by others. And I believe for the most part that has been the case. But it is not that way now. People disregarding the obvious signs, I’m afraid, are like those parents that allow their child to behave badly all the while making excuses. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. We are, thank God, expected to fall on a regular basis; it is what makes us human. But the true error is not acknowledging our faults and making an effort to correct them. If we stay the course of denial, we will be, truly, doomed.