02-21-2019, 02:06 AM
I am convinced that the hyper-partisan quality of American politics is an imposition from the economic elites in an effort to confuse, divide, and overpower.
I was at a Democratic Party meeting tonight in my county, and our guest was the local State Senator -- a Republican. That took some guts on his part. What did he discuss? Roads, the budget, and schools, things that matter greatly in Michigan. I could agree with him that much of the problem in education is that kids have excessive involvement with electronic entertainments. As is noteworthy he told us that Silicon Valley executives who make their living off supplying electronic gadgets and search engines limit their kids' access to the mind-numbing toys. That includes the Idiot Screen that has been around for about seventy years now. I have known people born about a century ago who had limited formal education but were well aware of news and were surprisingly well-read. I'm guessing that when the educational norm was eighth grade, educators tried to get kids to know as much as they could before they left school for work when 13 or so.
It's not Trump - Trump - Trump forever. Once he is off the political scene we will realize how screwed we have been. A little over half know this now, and when it is three-fifths, the political tendencies that led to Trump will be completely unsustainable. I am tempted to believe that we will start recognizing that character matters, and not only for the proles. The legitimate objective of politics in a democracy is service, and not control of people or economics.
I didn't get to say this, but I would love to give every kid a reader that gets only a few web sites, all undeniably educational (Project Gutenberg is the star, and among others, maybe WebMD, Khan Academy, the Library of Congress, Wikipedia, a dictionary site, and a site connecting to art. Outside links w3ould be disabled.
Bored? Read a little Dostoevsky or Hugo. Or take a look at some Cezanne or Hokusai.
I was at a Democratic Party meeting tonight in my county, and our guest was the local State Senator -- a Republican. That took some guts on his part. What did he discuss? Roads, the budget, and schools, things that matter greatly in Michigan. I could agree with him that much of the problem in education is that kids have excessive involvement with electronic entertainments. As is noteworthy he told us that Silicon Valley executives who make their living off supplying electronic gadgets and search engines limit their kids' access to the mind-numbing toys. That includes the Idiot Screen that has been around for about seventy years now. I have known people born about a century ago who had limited formal education but were well aware of news and were surprisingly well-read. I'm guessing that when the educational norm was eighth grade, educators tried to get kids to know as much as they could before they left school for work when 13 or so.
It's not Trump - Trump - Trump forever. Once he is off the political scene we will realize how screwed we have been. A little over half know this now, and when it is three-fifths, the political tendencies that led to Trump will be completely unsustainable. I am tempted to believe that we will start recognizing that character matters, and not only for the proles. The legitimate objective of politics in a democracy is service, and not control of people or economics.
I didn't get to say this, but I would love to give every kid a reader that gets only a few web sites, all undeniably educational (Project Gutenberg is the star, and among others, maybe WebMD, Khan Academy, the Library of Congress, Wikipedia, a dictionary site, and a site connecting to art. Outside links w3ould be disabled.
Bored? Read a little Dostoevsky or Hugo. Or take a look at some Cezanne or Hokusai.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.