School Reform and Jumbo Shrimp

I must be getting old.  I just read the CNN reader’s poll for best TV in 2013.  I am aghast.  It appears to me we have lost all our ability to think critically and discern reality from fantasy.  Where is George Carlin when we really need him?  I recall my hysterical laughter the first time I heard his routine on jumbo shrimp and the inherent cognitive dissonance of such a term.  His ability to identify oxymorons remains unsurpassed: military intelligence, holy war, death benefits, hot water heater, etc.)  Today there apparently remains no end to our ability to butcher our language.  Here are my current irritants.

Reality TV.  Never has a phrase been developed that more captures cognitive dissonance than the phrase reality TV.  Unless you are viewing a documentary, the Weather Channel’s coverage of a hurricane, or live coverage of a high speed police chase you are not watching reality on TV.  You are watching a fantasy production on TV.  Worse, each of these so-called reality shows seems to celebrate the lowest end of human accomplishment and wallow in joy at the rejection of some of the participants.  Why would we want to watch such an event?  It is beyond me.  If you enjoy quality dancing then dancing with the stars is not the show to watch.  If you enjoy quality singing, then American Idol, The Voice, etc. are not the shows to watch.  If you enjoy watching the pain of rejection and defeat, then tune in to a sporting event which comes much closer to reality TV than reality TV.  As for me, TV, books, movies, and video games are wonderful escapes from reality.  Each of these platforms has the ability to transport us to other places, times, clear fictions, reflections and fake blood.  If reality TV is in fact reality then I suffer from delusional thinking.  There is enough competition, rejection, and poor performance in my reality that I feel no need to seek it out on TV.  And until Robert Redford, Jennifer Aniston, Tom Cruise, Helen Mirren, Tom Sellick, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halley Berry, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Lawrence and/or Zoey Saldana appear on the show, the very title “dancing with the stars” is false advertising.

Obamacare.  The Affordable Health Care Act passed in the first two years of President Obama’s first term is an incredible piece of legislation.  The law makes patient health care more important than insurance company profit.  It eliminates the ability of insurance companies to deny coverage based on previous conditions, it expands coverage to dependent children, etc., etc.  It creates a national health care exchange forcing insurance companies to bid down health care.  On and on.  Yes, the act requires everyone to get health care coverage much as we currently require everyone to have automobile insurance and to wear seat belts.  To refer to this law as Obamacare is another twist on the use of the English language.  The act has nothing to do with the health care of the President.  The act has nothing to do with support and/or providing care to the President.  To call the law “Obamacare” is clearly a slur that has no meat, and yet is almost universally used.  If we can stomach this term, why not refer to the GOP fiscal policy as Millionairecare, or the Common Core as Pearsoncare, or vouchers and charters as Wealthycare, or all the proposed laws regarding Christmas, homosexuality, teaching religion in schools, female reproductive rights, etc, etc. as Christiancare.  This act is not about Obama.  It is about Americans who could not get nor could they afford health care.  If we want a nickname we should call it Everyonecare.

Selfie.  The Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year is equally confusing to me.  I understand that a selfie is a digital self-portrait taken typically at arm’s length.  I am not sure of all the boundaries of the word.  If I put a camera on a tripod, set a timer, and retreat to sit in front of a selected backdrop, is that a photo or a selfie?  If I take a picture of you with my cell phone is that a Youie?  Is the word so limited as to only apply to tilted, poorly lit, non formatted self photos?  If so, why not have a more specific term like, Vainey, or Tackie, or Shortarmshot?  Can there by definition be a candid self portrait?  Don’t I always know when I will click the shutter?  So, is a selfie my best foot forward?  The reflection I want the world to see of me?  If so, are commercial photographers worried?  If not, why would we do such a thing to ourselves?  Is it only because we are simply burning erasable mega pixels and we do not have to pay for film or development anymore?  I remain confused that we engage in such behavior, and if so that we share it.  Do we share it with anyone who does not know how we look?  Why would we do that?  Once we share a selfie, once seen by others, has a selfie automatically lost its claim to the term?  What shall we call a shared selfie?  A Groupie?  Is it OK to tag myself in a shared selfie?  How narcissistic can we actually become?  I am so confused.  More so because we could have chosen a word of the year that no one really understands like hashtag or twerking.

There are more.  One cannot buy a wall at Wal-Mart nor a garage at a garage sale, happy hour is always more than 60 minutes, livestock are raised to be killed, and why when there are only 3 possible times during a game to actually kick a ball do we call the sport football?  We should call it Tackle.  Likewise Dribble, and Pitch.

I have long irritated friends who would email me and ask things like, “Do you know so-and-so’s email address?” to which I would simply reply, “Yes.”  We become more obscure and obfuscating the more words and phrases we invent.  We should seek clarity.  Especially as our communications become instant and everyone has abandoned pen pals which required time and thought and reflection and effort. The same is not true of Instagrams, Tweets and Facebook which only require gizmos, not thought.

Which leads me to school reform.  Really?  Reform the school?  “Reform” implies changing or improving something that is wrong, something that is immoral, something that is corrupt.  Do we believe schools are in need of reform?  If so, what part of schools is immoral and corrupt?  I assume we are not talking brick and mortar, sidewalks, cafeterias and gymnasiums, though we might be in some cases.  Surely we are not talking about children.  They do not come to us corrupt.  If they become corrupt it is at the hands of the adults in the culture wherein they are raised, not the school.  Are we talking teachers, aides, principals?  No one tolerates corrupt adult practices in public schools.  When a teacher engages in inappropriate behavior with a student it makes the headlines.  When an administrator steals money it makes the headlines.  It makes the headlines because it is, quite frankly, so rare.  Fender benders and weekly burglaries do not make headlines as we have grown so accustomed to those multiple, immoral and harmful acts that they appear in list format somewhere buried in the bowels of the paper.  No, corrupt school people make headlines.   

So what must be reformed?  I would argue two things:  it is “school reformers” who are attempting to make profit from public tax dollars at the expense of kids and are therefore the corrupt component of schools.  Or, we have it backwards.  We really meant reform school, not school reform, for children who cannot behave.  As with jumbo shrimp, there really is not a school in America in need of reform or the elimination of corruption and greed any more than there is a whale-sized shrimp somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.  In fact, a jumbo shrimp is more likely than the need for school reform.  And it is in the private sector that we continue to discover immoral acts.  The market has no sense of morality.  I could have been comfortable with “school improvement” on the assumption that all organizations can improve and that the only real improvement is inside-out, not outside-in.  But no.  Reformers want school reform outside-in.  They will fight to the death to ensure the government does not reform their private practices any where near the extent they wish to the government to control public schools, especially for their own monetary gain.  For me, this is the ultimate oxymoron and we should be clear about that with the multiple morons who promote such.

Please pass the cocktail sauce, not for my cocktail (which would make sense), but for my 2 inch jumbo shrimp.

Santa Hired by NSA

I confess to enjoying the TV show, “Person of Interest”.  The premise is timely: the government via a super computer is capable on monitoring all of us all the time.  The good guys find out who is at risk and intervene to save them.  It is fun.  It is action packed.  It works because we believe the good guys are in fact benevolent, they are good guys. 

What if we do not trust those who monitor us to be the good guys? 

More frightening to me is the notion that if you have nothing to hide you do not care if you are monitored.

I see myself as a “good guy”.  I am plotting nothing.  I am not funding any group who would undermine this country.  If we were attacked, I would volunteer to serve, though that may be self-deception as I doubt the armed services would need the help of a little old lady.  Regardless, I love America.  I love our freedom and our way of life.  I am good guy.

Could I survive surveillance 24/7?  No, I could not.  We are all human, we are all precious and we are all flawed.  There is not a sinless person among us.  What we do when we are totally alone and off the grid is very private, very personal.  My beliefs, my thoughts, my desires are all sacred to me and I hold them near and dear in my heart of hearts and do not want them monitored.  Whether those who monitor are good guys or bad guys does not matter to me.  I do not want to be monitored.  And, I do not believe there is a monitor who is sinless.  For the Christians who bask in fear rather than grace, such surveillance is a huge motivator assuming the Almighty like Santa does in fact monitor us all the time.

At what point are we willing to sacrifice our personal freedom to be safe from attack?  Should we be able to run a red light when there is no one around?  Not anymore, we have traffic cams.  Should we be able to send an email that remains confidential?  Should we be able to explore the world of terrorism via Google without negative consequences?  We have become a monitored society.  Sadly, as we feel more at risk we sacrifice more freedoms to ensure our safety, all the while we must believe that those who monitor us are really good guys, they understand the human condition, and will forgive us if we make a simple, non-threatening mistake.

So, the perfect person for the NSA to bring on board is Santa Claus.  There are few figures that are perceived to be as totally benevolent as Santa Claus.  And yet, he may be the largest monitor of all.  Since 1934 we have taught children to accept his monitoring.  He knows when you’ve been sleeping.  He knows when you’re awake.  He knows if you’ve been bad or good, he making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.  Santa is the perfect consultant for NSA.  He already has the list!

If Santa can do it, why not the NSA? 

Duh, Santa is a fictional character, that’s why. 

Scary.

Blind Spot

Ahh, the holidays are here.  I have survived the little masked extortionists at the front door and celebrated our national gluttony day with family.  I prefer Thanksgiving.  Stuffed turkeys are the precursors to lit trees.  My Thanksgiving was good, surrounded by family and their legal and significant others.  There is always some tension in the air as young men must posture regarding football, hunting, and manliness in general, and the women must practice superficial niceties while waltzing around each other in the kitchen checking out each other’s recipes and marking their territory.  Children romp oblivious to the adult games, and infants wail seeking to draw their parents in.  I have grown too old to engage in these silly competitions and for the most part am amused watching in-laws and out-laws merging holiday traditions and two sets of expectations regarding dressing and giblet gravy.  But the food was wonderful!  After eating way too much I was content to adjourn to the couch, settle in as the matriarch to watch football, digest, and politely nap.

The nap was not meant to be.  A young man in his early 50’s sat near me and engaged an older gentleman in his mid 60’s regarding the state of things in America.  The young man owns his own business, has property in Texas and California, drives a Mercedes, and is very wealthy.  (He has never married and my wish for him is that he could commit to another in the ways he has committed to his political perspective.)  The older man is a petroleum engineer working for a large oil company, nearing retirement and also very wealthy, trophy wife, groomed and affluent children and grandchildren.  Fortunately I am not directly related to either.  They sat together to lambast all things Democrat, liberal and Obama.  My blood pressure rose as I listened to them share lies and shared perspectives.  Neither was interested in thinking about the issues.  They were much more interested in proclaiming truths a la Cruz and Limbaugh, in which there are few truths at all.  As they told each other the same lies they confirmed for each other that such lies must be true.  I opted to listen, eyes shut, to see if I could discern where they went astray.  Neither of these men is stupid.  After about 30 minutes of mutually reinforcing demagoguery I finally understood.  Yes, I was mad enough to kick the cat, but I had learned.

“When will they learn the government can’t do everything!” was the final shot across the bow, expressed by the younger and enthusiastically endorsed by the elder.  I was ready to vent my spleen when the conversation quickly morphed to football.  I took a deep breath and attempted to calm down.  As I did so, I realized I had just been granted an epiphany for which I remain ever so thankful.

The “they” in this final statement clearly refers to liberals, Democrats and the like.  I find it interesting that I have never seen nor read any liberal proposal for the government of the US to do “everything”.  That would be foolish.  The government is never likely to manufacture automobiles, develop a retail chain store, or open a fast food restaurant.  Virtually everything that is produced and sold in our market economy is done so by the private sector via mom and pop operations, partnerships and corporations.  In this I agree with my mislead friends, the government cannot do everything, nor should it, nor does anyone propose that it do so, even staunch liberals such as me.  So why do “we”, the onerous “they,” propose that the government do anything at all?

The market has been a wonderful structure for generating jobs and goods and innovations and wealth, etc., etc.  The market, however, is not moral.  It has a bottom line.  The goal in the market is to make money for the owners of the operation.  Clearly, if the owners are making less money they will cut their employees, so the goal is not employment.  Clearly if the owners can produce their product for less by manufacturing it oversees they will do so, so the goal is not patriotism.  Clearly if the owners can make more money by ignoring health risks they will do so, so the goal is not the health and well being of their employees.  The goal is making money for the owners.  If there is a demand for goods the market will provide a producer for that good, whether we perceive the good to be moral or not.  That is why we have large fire arms manufacturers and drug dealers, prostitutes and pornography.  There is a demand, the market produces the goods.  The market looks only at the profit from production, not the morality of the production.  The debacle of 1929 and 2008 were both symptomatic of an unfettered market run amuck. 

What should we as a nation do when we discover that the market is generating goods and services that we deem immoral or unhealthy?  The owners will not change production because to do so will reduce profits.  Profit is the raison d’être.  Upton Sinclair pointed out that the meat packing industry was making a lot of money but they were doing so with no regard for the health of the consumer.  Therefore, the government intervened.  That is why we have regulatory agencies to oversee the production of the food we eat.  It would be more profitable for the producers of food to not worry about E. coli and other diseases.  The same is true in restaurants.  The same is true with the water we drink.  The same is true with the drugs we take.  The same is true regarding the working conditions in our economy.  The same is true regarding the dependability of the goods we buy.  The same is true regarding the pollutants we release in our atmosphere.  On and on and on “we” have turned to the government to overlay a moral principle on the market economy when people are at risk.  Yes, that is government intervention in the market.  But it has occurred because as a people we have learned that the market is not moral.  Producers will not raise their costs and reduce their profit because it is moral.  When the government intervenes with a regulation it levels the playing field.  All producers must comply with the moral requirement, so no one producer suffers the cost of going broke acting on moral grounds.  To put it another way, the government does what it does because of the failure of the market economy to have a conscience. 

So, what about health care?  Insurance companies will clearly make more money if they can refuse to cover people based on pre-existing conditions.  Insurance companies will clearly make more money if they only insure those who can afford the insurance and those who are healthy.  As a nation, should we allow the insurance companies, and the employers who select them, to determine who can have insurance and who receives appropriate medical care?  The answer for years has been yes, we should allow the market to determine such things.  Now, we look at the data and the market solution has been deemed by many to be immoral. Only some people get insurance.  Those who can get insurance pay more if they are more at risk, or in other words, the more you need insurance the less likely you are to get it and if you do the more it will cost.  Is that what we as a nation want:  Big bucks for insurance companies while millions of Americans go without?  I find that immoral.  I wonder and worry about the folks who do not.  I suspect they all have insurance and/or own stock in insurance companies.  Again, the government has stepped in only because the market has failed to do the moral thing. 

The conservative flaw is the assumption that the market functions better than the government on moral issues.  It clearly does not; it clearly has not.  As I look at the ways in which the market selected employees prior to the legislative end of discrimination and the required equal employment opportunities, and the rise of women in the ranks of CEO’s it is clear the market would never address these issues.  As I look at the number of hungry and mistreated children it is clear that the market would never address these issues.  As I look at the health risks in manufacturing it is clear the market would never address the issue.  As I look at the wages paid and overtime pay it is clear the market would never address these issues.  In fact, the market has a stellar record of ignoring all things moral for the sake of making money.  To do otherwise would end the production in a competitive setting.  (You may care to look at my earlier posts regarding competition.)

I know a lot of liberals, few in Texas.  I do not know a single one who awakes each day seeking new ways to intervene in the market for the sake of government usurpation of production.  That is pure folly.  I do see and I do experience an ongoing exasperation with the private sector argument that what is good for business is good for the USA.  We have heard that before and it has not worked, or at least it has not worked for anyone other than the owners of production who have grown very rich.  I am a liberal because of my belief system, my sense of moral right and wrong.  I have a hard time understanding the conservative argument that allowing the market to freely operate is in our best interest.  We keep trying that and the market keeps spitting in our collective faces. 

The government only intervenes when the market fails.  Period.  It does not intervene for reasons other than the protection and promotion of the citizens of this country.  And when the market crashes, and major companies are on the verge of failing, they change their tune very quickly and turn to the government for support.  Amazing.

The conservative blind spot is an honest appraisal of the market, its strengths and weaknesses, and honest support when the government should intervene.  If they argue that it should not, not ever, then I see them as immoral, worshiping the profit god.  If they drink water from the tap, buy meat at the grocery store, take medications, drive on highways, fly on planes, talk on cell phones, drop letters in the mail, purchase new vehicles, take a deep breath of air, or ever have to go to the emergency room to be treated by doctors and nurses then they should celebrate and support the role of government as watchdog, protector, monitor and insurer of moral practices more than profit. 

Worse, if the conservatives take a purely government function like education and argue that it will be improved if it functioned more like the market then my knickers really are in a twist.  When it comes to the education of our children why would we abandon a moral motivation for an immoral one?

Why is that so hard to see?  Must be in a blind spot.

I close my eyes to nap, but never to injustice.