Reflections From a Murky Pond

The simple fact that America’s government-run school system is broken and that educational failure is their sole legacy can’t be truthfully argued against. The only arguments that can be engaged in are: why? who’s to blame? and how do we fix or remake it?

It’s easy to blame technology. After all, why should teachers actual teach what students can use modern technology to do for them instead?

But They Didn’t Teach Us That In Ethnomathematics!

I don’t think it’s fair to blame technology though since the average child in America could recite chapter and verse of the Liberals’ politically correct versions of history and sociology how America was wrong and how the country was based upon the evils of: racism, xenophobia, homophobia, religion, nationalism, and capitalism.

Oh yes! Religion (except for Islam post 9/11), nationalism, and capitalism are taught as “evils” in the modern (re)education camps the Liberals demand we call schools.

That same child could also likely parrot his “teachers’” chimera that teaching math and science and testing on those subjects is racist because it can’t take into account the differences in cultural backgrounds of non-White students. He or she could also offer strikingly similar rationalizations as why all the “teaching” was done to the lowest common denominators in his or her class.

No. Technology may be an enabler in this educational failure but it’s not the cause. The cause is the Liberals’ desire to indoctrinate children into their anti-American ideology.

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Much like the cries of racism and complaints about ad hominem attacks, recently we’ve been hearing a lot of cries for civility in political discourse. There’s a certain subset of the residents within America’s borders who want a more polite and staid approach to deciding the course of America.

It seems that politics has gotten too raw and real for some people.

This, of course, begs three related questions: who are these people crying for increased civility, what is it that they actually want, and why do they want it so much?

Who’s Crying For Civility

I see two disparate and unrelated general segments of America’s population crying out for an increase in civility in political speech and argument. They are respectively the apolitical drones and the Leftists, the Liberals and Progressives. Each makes similar outcries but for seemingly different reasons and with different real goals.

What Do They Really Want And Why?

The apolitical people just want things to go quietly. They’re uninvolved in politics, fervently wish to stay that way, and are both bothered and scared by the passion that is being shown by many others. Whether from cynicism or self-centeredness, they do not want to pull their heads out the oh-so-comfortable sand and become involved and the fire of current political discourse is preventing them from doing this.

The staid, stuffy, and easily ignored ways are what these drones want to return to because they don’t want to open their eyes and choose a side.

The Leftists, these Liberals and Progressives, are quite different.  They are awake, aware, involved in the political process, and they have a definite direction that they want to take America in. Their cries for civility are really two things: cynical attempts to silent their enemies and cries for validation and acceptance.

The willfully uninvolved will just have to stop their ears better and learn to keep their heads down.

For many of the Left, their cries are just dog-whistles for censoring the American people. They don’t really want civility, as their very cries for it often show, so much as they want to stop any dissent against their foundations of their agenda.

For others on the left it is a matter of crying out for acceptance and validation. They’re looking for some affirmation that, even though their enemies disagree with their core ethos, they are still respected and approved of.

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Sadly for those who’re crying out for increased civility, I don’t see much chance of- or value in its return any time in the near future. The divide in America is not too deep; it’s to fundamental. It doesn’t allow for the luxury of civility anymore. It’s not a political divide; it’s an ethical and moral divide.

We’re not going to be silenced. We’re not going to engage in carefully managed debates over minutiae of methodology when we want to change the goals and systems. And we’re very much not going to respect our enemies when we find the core beliefs that underpin their goals and actions to be utterly abominable and abhorrent.

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One thing for all to remember about Obama is that judging by his words, deeds, and choice of those he surrounds himself with, is that he’s not American, not in his heart and soul. Or, at the very least, that is how he and his coterie have crafted his public image.

It may seem to be an odd course of action for someone who previously claimed to not accept partisan divisions and to hope for a unified America, but only if one was foolish and naive enough to believe anything that Obama says about his beliefs and goals.

One would also have to set aside the basic rules of realpolitik to find Obama’s “otherness,” real or portrayed with great skill, to be surprising. Divisiveness is far more effective as a political tactic than is “unifying” and Obama has always diligently and dutifully followed the rules of realpolitik.

One has to remember that this “otherness” of Obama is exactly what America’s domestic enemies, the oikophobic Liberals, love about him. It also lets them paint the American people as racist and xenophobic, which feeds their own preconceptions of America as a place of evil that must be brought low.

It’s fairly obvious that the upcoming 2012 elections are going to be a base vs. base war with, as happened in 2008, the “moderates” and “independents” split roughly down the middle. This means that Obama’s “otherness” is a useful political coin, but one that works to galvanize friend and enemy alike.

The question remains though of how long with the house that Obama’s Otherness divided continue to stand…

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