July 2023
A Nation of Sgt. Shultzes?
12/07/23 16:01
July 12, 2023 (Vol. 17 No. 30) - According to a Gallup Poll issued yesterday, America's confidence in higher education has fallen to 36 percent. That's down from 57 percent in 2015 and 48 percent in 2018. And it doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure out the reason: Donald Trump. Since that Man Child rode down his gilded escalator to announce his candidacy for the presidency in the summer of 2015, anything even closely related to the truth has been under constant attack from the right fringe. It is true: There has always been an anti-intellectual undercurrent throughout American history. There have always been certain politicians who refuse to let facts get into the way of a preferred narrative. And certainly, the Defeated Former President didn't start the current wave of anti-intellectualism. However, the twice-indicted scam artist and convicted sexual assaulter successfully exploited it in 2016, tried to ferment a coup d'etat in early 2021 and hopes to ride its wave back into the White House in November 2024. His lemming-like allies in state legislatures across the land have embraced Trump's "Alternate Facts" philosophy, trying to ban the teaching of inconvenient truths, such as slavery, racial discrimination, sexism and oppressive oligarchical policies that have led to a widening and unethical distribution of wealth and benefits. Much of this anti-intellectualism was fed by the frustration coming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, acting on the best available information, urged Americans to make sacrifices to halt the spread of the most deadly virus to hit the planet in a century. But that didn't fit into Donald Trump's reelection narrative - and he was willing to allow hundreds of thousands of Americans die because of Trump's callous inaction and incompetence. Instead, Dr. Fauci is the target of right-wing nut jobs who want you to believe he is the real villain. To be fair, Gallup notes that confidence in higher education has fallen among both democrats and republicans. Democrats express concerns about rising costs. Among republicans, the concern is purely political. (This is what the poll respondents said, not Gallup.) They apparently want their children to believe that everyone in America has an equal opportunity to succeed - even though there are mountain ranges of evidence to the contrary. Donald Trump says that's how he became rich - he pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Of course, like practically everything else that orange creature says, that's a lie. What we are experiencing is a 21st century version of the Know-Nothings, a pre-Civil War nativist movement that sought to maintain the status quo of powerful white slave-holding landowners. Slavery may be dead in America, but fear of the country's changing demographic composition is what has been driving the Republican Party for decades along a disastrous anti-intellectual course that threatens to destroy the nation and all it supposedly stands for. (How else do you explain the presence of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress?) If we had it their way, we'd become a nation of Sgt. Shultzes from the 1960s TV series Hogan's Heroes whose oft-repeated line was "I know nothing, nothing!" That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.An Aspirational America
04/07/23 04:32
July 4, 2023 (Vol. 17 No. 29) - Some may call me naïve. Others may accuse me of being a Pollyanna. However, it is within my DNA to believe in America and in its founding principles. On this Independence Day, I share the concerns many of my fellow citizens have about crime, discrimination, injustice and gun violence. I am especially concerned about the moral and political corruption that reaches deep into the three branches of the federal government. However, despite all of this, I still believe in America. I believe that even with these flaws, our country still stands as the world's best hope. No, I don't blindly believe in America as is it. I believe in an aspirational America, one where democracy and meritocracy are one in the same. I know that cannot happen until all are accorded equal opportunity. I also know that our nation must set a higher standard for ourselves than we do for others. We can't lecture others on the merits of a civil society when we don't practice civility among ourselves. We can't preach about the merits of democracy when some of us engage in blatant voter oppression and others are involved in open sedition. And what about those who aspire to become Americans? Unless you are a Native American, we all came from somewhere else. I find it ironic that those who tell us they worship the memory of Ronald Reagan don't appear to know what he stood for. Listen to the last speech he gave as president. It was a love letter to the immigrants who forged this nation into what he called "A Shining City on the Hill." In a 1982 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Reagan boasted that American hasn't built walls to keep people in. He should have added that we - at least for the most part - hadn't built walls to keep them out, either. Neither Reagan - nor I - favored uncontrolled open borders. But we both agreed that people seeking freedom and opportunity afforded within this nation should have it. Reagan had faith in the Founders. So do I. Sure, there's a lot to fret about on this Independence Day. And it is our duty as citizens to seek the changes we desire through meaningful and civil public discourse that is ultimately decided at the ballot box. America today is far from perfect. But, our Constitution proclaims in its preamble that it was created "in order to form a more perfect union." If we love our country as much as we say we do, let's not make it a confrontational America that tears down people because they are different than us and tries to build walls to keep people out. It should be an aspirational America — one that taps into the best that all of us bring to these sacred shores. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.