A bright sunny day, -4 degrees, up from 16 below this morning. Ah, Colorado, 70 degrees and golf on Friday, snow and frigidity on Tuesday. I get messages from a friend in Florida, and a friend in Maui, that temperatures are warm, sunny and tropical. For just a moment, I wish I were there. Ah shit, who's kidding who? I wish I were there right fucking now!
Spent a goodly portion of the last two days watching TV. Science Channel has a series, "How It's Made". Forty-eight hour marathon, I didn't watch 'em all, but I watched a bunch of them. Fascinating, the processes that have been developed to manufacture products. There is not much that the show features that is made by human hands, except that maybe the machines that do most of the 'manufacturing' had to be designed and built by humans, at least until there was a pattern made, then computers and robotic contraptions can do the rest. While I am watching these industrial marvels intricately and consistently produce item after item, I am struck by the reason why there is so much unemployment in this country. Industry and commerce reward, through increased profit, those companies which can produce goods efficiently so as to be more profitable. The 'Henry Ford' model of mass production has displaced human labor to an astonishing degree. And even those jobs that people can still perform, can be done more cheaply in China, Singapore, Thailand, India. Why? Because those nations' infrastructures do not require such cumbersome anti-commerce details such as health insurance, workman's comp, minimum wage, safe workplace rules, coffee breaks, pension plans, unions. Yes, American workers had it good, until they didn't. We hardly produce anything in this country anymore. And what we do produce, we make do with the minimum of human interaction and collaboration. I won't blame unions, or government, or immigration, or the media, or global warming, or even Barry Obama. The real reason are the money magicians. The ones who really operate the strings of the puppets they control. I am firmly convinced that less than a dozen people really control what happens in the world, as far as commerce and banking are concerned. And banking and commerce determine how governments and countries act and react. Our American Congress, because there are more than 500 greedy bastards out to accomplish their own agendas, cannot agree on anything of substance, so it's easy to pull their collective strings. Our lawmakers think that they can be very imaginative with their smoke-and-mirrors approach to hoodwinking the American public into assuming that they have our best interests in mind, but who are we kidding? By the time we figure out that we're getting fucked, it takes another couple years to get rid of the crooked scoundrels, and by then somebody else, who is bought and paid for, steps up and takes their turn in the sack. But, the real villains are the ones who pull the strings, like I said. The entrenched merchant bankers and 'industrialists' of the world. When one of them bastards cuts himself shaving, whole countries bleed to death.
Ah, but back to unemployment: why are there so many unemployed American citizens? Because there are too many goddamn non-citizens in this country. It's not an easy problem to deal with. I don't pretend to have a viable, humane answer to the question. In my opinion, it's too late to put the cat back in the bag. There is a terrible money crisis upon us, and the next thing that will happen is that slowly (I hope slowly), there will be an increasingly severe food problem. It's already reached famine proportions in many corners of the globe, and it will slowly creep into the 'civilized' pockets of the world, including right here. This country needs to get back to producing and making stuff again. Oh, it will eventually have to happen. Way before fossil fuels run out, money and credit won't matter. The only things that will matter are food and water. And SportsCenter.
Next question I have: why is our education system in such turmoil and disrepair? Because too many kids don't care because too many parents don't give a shit. I am reading article after article that chronicle the failings of our over-burdened school systems, the failings of our school boards to manage their resources, the failings of teachers that do not engage enough of their students, the failings of our government to prioritize education. STOP! Education begins, and ends, at home. And the state of national emergency should be focused upon what's happening at home. How many two-parent, stable homes are there any more? I know of many one-parent homes that are successfully maintaining stable family values, and I applaud them. But, for the most part, kids are struggling, because adults are struggling. How many homes have fewer than three televisions? What percentage of parents meet their kids' teachers? What percentage of kids get fed a wholesome meal away from school? How many kids really know what my generation would define as "The American Way"? My guess is that the current definition of the american way is: Fuck everybody, get as much as you can, any way that you can, and step on anybody in your way. Sounds about right. My son is in his first year of teaching, and he is eager to engage and affect every kid he comes into contact with. But, while he's doing that, he has to fill out report after report about how the required tests, and check-points, and competency guidelines are being met. And formulate and institute plans and ideas to increase 'average test scores'. So that administrators and officials can sit at their computers and examine the findings, and pontificate some more about how the schools need to do better to reach the poor, and the English-as-second-language kids, and the ones who are falling behind, and the disadvantaged, and the learning-challenged. Meanwhile, the kids who ARE learning, get punished because they have to wait for the others to catch up. We are dumbing down America because we are placating the lowest common denominators in our society. Teachers' hands are tied, because they cannot afford to teach the kids that are truly engaged, they have to spend most of their time allotted on trying to reach kids who really don't give a fuck anyway. Because each one of those kids counts just as much to the aggregate "score" as the kid who is really learning. Yes, there are targeted programs like IB and AP, and charter schools try to target a more motivated audience, but the vast majority of our citizenry is more interested in obtaining objects, than in reaching objectives. Do I see any improvement on the horizon? No, do you? So, kudos to the many engaging and influential teachers in my life. Not just the ones that I encountered in school. Many friends, relatives, and employers, co-workers, clients, children, people on TV and in some movies, and in books and magazines, everyone that I have learned from, thank you. And most of all, thanks to MY parents, who instilled the thirst to learn, to go forward, to engage the world, and make it a better place. That's what I hope to instill in my kids, and grandkids. That's the only hope I see for my part in improving the status quo, because I ain't got none of them fucking strings!
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