Politics

WE THE PEOPLE…

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

I am being lazy today but since only nine of you read this the first time I decided to reblog.

WE THE PEOPLE….

I hear variations of the same question, “What are our kids being taught in schools today? Why don’t we know MORE about ‘THE LAW’?” I will be honest, after spending over forty years in the profession, most of those years as a social studies teacher, I must answer, “I don’t know.” I would also point out from what I have seen, MANY OF THE PEOPLE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT DON’T KNOW THE LAW either…nor do they know the history behind the law…and they are my age. I do believe we are getting exactly what someone has asked for…A LESS THAN AWARE ELECTORIATE. How else do you explain continuing to elect and re-elect the same idiots…on both sides of the aisle? How else do you explain allowing our constitutional democracy to turn into an oligarchy…not that most of us can even define it. Let’s keep education on the back burner why don’t we. Pay now or pay later I guess…and continue to add to the profit lines of the already very, very rich and corrupt. All righty, that’s the wrong soapbox.

Remember Civics? It was a course I took in junior high school. Now, in my part of the world, we don’t teach it anymore. Instead of Civics, a little Constitution is taught along with South Carolina History in the eighth grade. In high school, US History and Constitution is required in the junior year along with Government and Economics in the senior year. A total of less than a year devoted to the laws and rights we enjoy and Economics taught when Seniors are afflicted with the nearing graduation disease, Senioritis. Why don’t we donate a little more time to our own Constitution? Do we really need to teach World History before the Renaissance again and why DID we get rid of recess?

I have to admit, constitutional law in the eighth grade or during middle school is probably not a good idea. Were it left to me, middle schoolers would be locked up and not let out until high school. From my own remembrances I learned more about the little brunette girl and her rapidly expanding chest than anything about the First Amendment. From my middle school teaching experiences, I would say this hasn’t changed…LAWD HAVE MERCY THE RAGING HORMONES! My junior year? I did a little better with US History and but again learned very little about the Constitution. This time it wasn’t the fault of the much more mature brunette girl. I CAN remember my teacher telling us about dropping an “Atomic Bum” on Hiroshima. “Bum” was the way he pronounced it, “Bum” instead of “Bomb.” I admit to having a vision of a “glowing hobo” falling from the bomb bay a B-29. Not any remembrances about Constitution though.

Kidding aside, may be, I admit Civics in the Sixties was a little akin to “indoctrination.” Despite being taught otherwise in primary school George Washington could not have thrown a silver dollar across the Potomac. It would be several years before I came to that realization as I stood at the edge of the Potomac gazing at Washington a mile or more on the other side. I don’t know about the cherry tree either but have my doubts.

I believe our laws and rights should be taught with an emphasis on how our government really works rather than how it is supposed to work. Maybe this time with a little less emphasis on “my government right or wrong” along with “I’d rather be dead than red,” and more about truth “warts and all.” When I took Civics it was still about “American Exceptionalism” and defeating the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Viet Nam and Watergate changed those dynamics. Maybe we should try to get over Viet Nam and Watergate, not forget them…actually learn from them. Maybe when the politicians and our government learn.

In some ways social studies has become an afterthought in today’s educational environment…along with “related arts.” English, along with the math and sciences, are considered more important because they are what we test on. Despite this and other limitations, if I were to find myself back in the classroom teaching again, SHUTTER-SHUTTER, I would teach US History and Constitution outside of the box. I would start, not at the beginning but, where we are now and work backwards to understand how we arrived at where we are now. War, Social Issues, Civil Rights, and a myriad of other issues, in no particular order, along with a heavy dose of the Constitution would be themes that I would attempt to help the students come to grips with…and possibly myself.

Don Miller has written three books which may be purchased at http://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM
Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING can be downloaded for $1.99.
“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in FLOPPY PARTS for $.99.
“Southern Stories of the Fifties and Sixties…” in PATHWAYS for $3.99.
All may be purchased in paperback.

TEACHING ISLAM?

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

Former students, help me out here. Not just my former students, any former student. Do you remember being taught anything about Islam during “World History before the Renaissance” or Comparative Religion courses? I keep seeing such an outcry against teaching anything about Islam. Do we not need to know our enemy? Wait, I do not want to be misunderstood…I don’t think Islam is our enemy any more than I believe Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism or Judaism are our enemies. I probably should have mentioned Animism and Jainism to because I mentioned them when I taught comparative religion. Okay Confucius taught a way of life based upon mutual respect and technically is not a religion, I guess, but I taught it just like I did the others. It would appear I might have failed with the concept of respect. I also did a unit on modern terrorism. Daesh or ISIS weren’t our enemies then but Al Qaida was, along with several dozen (or more) other terrorist groups running the gambit of all religions along with people who claim to be atheist.

All terrorist are not Muslim nor are all Muslims terrorist. According to multiple sources, all biased I am sure, Muslim terrorism caused less than ten percent of the deaths due to terrorism recorded on US soil since 9/11. One source, http://www.washingtonsblog.com, siting the START Global Terrorism Database, states that since 1970, only 2.5 percent of terrorist acts carried out on US soil were Muslim. But, I digress.

Why would we not teach comparative religions or for that matter comparative cultures? Do we just ignore what we don’t want to understand and refuse to recognize the contributions made by Africans, Asians, Muslims, Catholics, and Mormons…etc.? During the Middle Ages “Western Civilization” was somewhat stagnate and backward…until Christian knights went off to fight the barbarians who called them infidels. Despite losing the “Holy Land” and actually killing more Jews and Christians than Muslims, Crusading knights brought back more than they left with. In addition to unknown foods and spices, they brought back a real concept of medicine based upon science rather than superstition, algebra, clocks, water wheels, and the modern acoustic guitar. Okay I have digressed again but am sure thankful they brought home the guitar and got one into BB King’s hands. They could have left algebra behind.

I’m not a fan of the Common Core and certainly am against lesson plans trying to convert our children to Islam…or any religion which I doubt Common Core does. As a teacher of social studies, conversion was not my function and in my part of the world is not allowed in public schools. However, teaching all religions from a cultural or historical standpoint is…and should remain so. Not teaching Islam would be akin to Nazi’s burning Jewish books, ignoring Protestantism if one were a Catholic or maybe ignoring the contributions of Mormons in our own West. As I have been told repeatedly from certain flag wavers, its history and we can’t ignore it…nor should we. We should also practice what we preach.

“DIVIDE ET IMPERA”

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

No one knows with certainty who said it first…”Divide and Rule.” Philip of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great, King Louie XI of France and Machiavelli all used it. It has been attributed to Julius Caesar and Sun Tzu’s ART OF WAR. It has also been misquoted in translation to mean “Divide and Conquer.” For my purposes, this particular translation works fine. You might want to consider another famous quote, this one from Abraham Lincoln, “A house divided cannot stand.” They are both related.

We are up to our chins in a metaphorical swamp loaded with hungry alligators and we are doing nothing to drain it, except to point fingers and blame each other for not draining the swamp sooner or causing the swamp to fill up originally. Honestly! Does it matter how the alligators got into the swamp or who is to blame? We are past the point of blame but we continue to feed the alligators anyway.

Has anyone thought that our “Islamophobia” might be doing exactly what ISIS wants? Driving a wedge between the people of the United States. Dividing and possibly creating more “soldiers” for ISIS and more fear for rest of us, domestic Muslims included. ISIS would not want to do that would they? I have read so many divisive post that are being shared by people that I thought were good Christians and intelligent people. Good Christian BIGOTS it would seem. RACISM in the name of Christ. Towel heads, goat fuckers, jokes about burning Mosques and “bed sheets” burning. Reminds me of the Fifties and Sixties and WE, AS GOOD CHRISTIANS, should be ashamed. Actually it reminds me more of Nazi propaganda films produced prior to World War Two designed and well executed to turn the German population against Jews. Even our presidential candidates are proposing closing Mosques or forcing Muslims to wear identification. How very Nazi of them. I know there is no law, other than Christ’s law, preventing someone from being bigoted or racist but we need to understand our enemy and focus on defeating him. Turning our own Muslim population against us does not provide us with a means to that end. Should we consider where these post are coming from? ISIS has proven to have the technological expertise to introduce such division although I am not sure they need to. I still believe our greatest enemy is ourselves and someone’s propaganda machine is working overtime.

We have myriad of problems facing us and most are of our own creation, including ISIS. How do we solve them? One at a time and it must begin with the defeat of ISIS and not the alienation of our population. It’s not about Muslims, Christians or Jews, blacks, whites or any other race. It is not about protesting college students or about abusive rhetoric, nor for that matter…any rhetoric. It’s about humans becoming unified as Americans against one enemy that is not us.

DARK FORCES AMONG US

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

DARK FORCES AMONG US

I really miss the good old days – the days when we knew who our enemies were. The days when a lab experience involving sodium and water gone wrong could be laughed at; when potato guns and exploding gas-filled hydrogen balloons were tools used to engage students instead of weapons of potential terrorist activities. When fertilizer was fertilizer and not a potential bomb. I also hate it when a kid walking into a school with a clock gets arrested. I understand it and agree completely with what the school did because of the dark times that we live in. It hurts me to have to say that. It also hurts me to see the venom directed toward a child named Ahmed and a president named Barack in the aftermath. This is our Christian society?

It seems that everything provokes an argument. Not an argument waiting to happen but argument that already exists. I visualize both the far left and far right-wingers waiting for POTUS to finish his morning poop so they can argue over the consistency of his stool and whether it is light or dark enough, firm enough or soft enough, or whether it does or does not contain enough pork to prove that he is or is not a Muslim. No, I don’t believe he is a Muslim. I do believe he was born in the United States. Those of you who disagree have fallen under the influence of dark forces. We are six and one-half years into his presidency. You are beating a dead mule and it stinks!

I have always considered myself a moderate, center of the road kind of guy. I CAN’T FIND THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD anymore! I know that the middle still exists and that the majority of the people of the United States are there. But where is it and why are we so quiet?

I guess I have gotten “jaded” in my old age. WHERE IS THE SO-CALLED MORAL MAJORITY? I don’t mean the hate-spewing far right, in their own mind, moral majority. You do realize in another time, Hitler was firmly on the far right. How did that work out for him and the world? Yes, I did compare SOME CHRISTIANS to Hitler. They are the ones who hate lesbians and gays, Jews, Muslims and blacks with a venom I hope I never understand. They also believe that the Second Amendment entitles them to purchase a fully-armed tank or an ICBM.

A post piqued my interest and, in search of truth, I found myself on a site called TruthTV.US. I’ll be honest, after looking at it, I feel a little dirty and in need of a shower. I had the same feeling years ago when I researched the American Communist Party for a lesson plan I was doing, not that I was thinking about joining. I hope that Homeland Security was not monitoring me this time. On this site I saw videos by David Duke, a video entitled “The Monkey Who Became President”, and all types of racial, cultural and government hate-spewing. The problem rattling around in my head is that some of their tenets and videos I saw seem to be in line with posts on Facebook from people I care about.

Dark forces have kidnapped the middle! Within two hours of identifying the UCC shooter I saw posts “proving” that he was a Muslim, citing a link on a social media account (Breitbart). Others (Examiner and Huffington Post) were claiming he was a Nazi fanatic with ties to the IRA. Later a third (The Inquisitr) quoted from the shooter’s “manifesto” and described him as being a young man who “would die friendless and a virgin.” There was a time when I feared the same thing but I never shot anyone. Far right versus far left and all are lies or, at least, misinformation…except for The Inquisitr. Other news services reported he was a hater of organized religion and a misguided, mentally ill man with a bunch of guns. Another site accused CNN of “lightening” his picture to make him look more “white.” His dad is white but why should it matter? Well, the right says it should matter even though lately most school shootings have been carried out by mentally ill white kids. His mother is black and there are plenty of left-leaning sites blaming her for his love for guns and the Second Amendment. FACT: He was a mentally disturbed, Army washout who was allowed to play with too many guns and those nine people are still dead. Dark forces, including our politicians, are pushing their agendas while the bodies had yet to be buried.

The one post that really upset me was the one from the European Union Times which reported the shooter’s name had been on a terrorist list offered to us by the Russians, a list President Obama refused to accept. I have seen nothing to support it yet a former teaching bud shared the post. I’m sure he wasn’t the only one but he should know better. Do you think the Russians sent President Obama an email warning him? We ARE getting along so well. The European Union Times was characterized by Rational Wiki as xenophobic, anti-Sematic, and racist, as well as, Obama bashers. Then there is the question as to how reliable is Rational Wiki? Another question is how xenophobic, anti-Sematic, and racist are the people sharing this.

There are dark forces hiding in every shadow. Why do WE ALLOW these dark forces to do their dirty work? Do we not realize that it is our country that they are trying to destroy? A Facebook friend of mine, Don McCorkle, posted a quote about a mental malady called cognitive dissonance proposed by Franz Fanon, a psychoanalyst.

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”

Some of us are allowing dark forces to play on our prejudices, our preconceptions, and our fears thus feeding our cognitive dissonance. Some are blindly passing off lies as the truth without one bit of research or conscience. Many times these lies are spread in the name of God. There are liars and agitators who are poisoning our way of life and turning us against each other in hopes that we will destroy ourselves and we are allowing it. Somehow the rational middle must get control of their imaginations and address their fears before that happens. We who have not been duped must hasten to expose these dark forces to the cleansing light of day before it is too late.
Image from http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/grim-reaper-dad-spooked-after-6268150

WHAT ARE I?

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

WHAT ARE I?
I have been involved in a Facebook argument of Biblical proportions…only because I am having such a flood of emotions. Just a small argument, not Biblical at all I guess, although one of my protagonists might wish that a Biblical flood would wash me away. He is so far right I can see left from where he is and it causes me to question my own political position. I no longer know what I am. I used to know. Now I am at a loss. Sixty-five and I don’t know what I are! I need a tag. NO! Not a skin tag. I need a political tag. I used to say that I was a moderate but I just don’t know. Just an average, middle of the road kind of Joe who voted with his heart and not a party. I have voted in eleven presidential elections, five times Republican, five times Democrat and once I threw my vote away and wrote in Alfred E. Newman. Now I feel I need a tag. Libtard, right wing storm trooper. I just don’t know. “They gotta name for the winners in the world. I want a name when I lose. They call Alabama the Crimson Tide. Call me Deacon Blues.” Naaa. It’s a good Steely Dan tune but it just doesn’t work BECAUSE I AM NOT A LOSER…maybe.
Okay, let’s try to figure it out. Y’all will help right? So let’s begin. Shall we? I believe that our borders should be defended. Both of them in fact, although not many Canucks seem to be headed south. Was that a derogatory term and should I care in this too PC world? We should not let illegals come in. Deport any immigrants who are criminals. Have a program that fine upstanding citizens-to-be can complete. According to the Facebook posts I’ve seen there may be two of them. When newly created legals complete a twenty-year citizenship program, give them the “brass ring” because they will have earned it…and that includes those anchor babies, too. “No speaky English, no gitty the brass ring!” That makes me a conservative, right? I will go further to say that we should limit the number of legal aliens entering the country. We just have too many people speaking with accents. Right wing storm trooper?
Okay the truth is I do believe we need to defend our borders but how do we fund it? How do we patrol it? Jobs for unemployed veterans? I want vets to have jobs. They deserve them and should be sent to the head of the employment line. How do we pay for an expanded border patrol and the cost of deporting twelve million illegal aliens? Oh, we save it on benefits that we are giving them I guess. Are we going to build Trump’s beautiful tall wall and use my Social Security check to pay for it? ENTITLEMENT? I HAVE SPENT FIFTY YEARS PAYING INTO IT. HOW IS IT AN ENTITLEMENT? No one seems to have an answer for how we are going to pay for the wall. Trump, the self-proclaimed front runner, has said he has a plan but I’m still waiting for him to get back to me on it. Better yet, won’t that wall ruin the view? Oh, Trump did say it would be beautiful. Geeez, what are I?
Guarding our borders includes protecting our shores, doesn’t it? Again I am all for protecting our shores from far, far away. A strong military is what we need. According to The Donald, we must have the most feared military in the world. Didn’t the Kaiser and then Hitler want that, too? “Over there, Over there” …wrong war. We really don’t have any cute Afghanistan ditties to sing. The songs about Afghanistan tend to be dark. According to South Carolina’s “setting son” Lindsay Graham, “We must put more boots on the ground if we want to win.” I agree…if Afghanistan can be won. That’s liberal isn’t it? But what about those twenty thousand boots that represent ten thousand troops? Are the American people going to allow an escalation in the war? I haven’t heard that term since Vietnam because it is a bad word. Libtard I are?
No problem. Pull all our troops out and NUKE THEM. They are just a bunch of “towel heads” and “goat f@#kers.” Turn the whole place into a shiny glass parking lot. While you are at it, take care of those two “I” places that no one can keep straight or find on a map. Sorry, my desire to have a right wing storm trooper tag just went away. I actually saw that sentiment in print. Aside from the lack of humanity, do you really think Putin and his minions are going to allow us to play with nukes in his backyard? Oh, now what are I? Smart I would think.
Another massacre has started the debate on gun control again. Can we not let the bodies cool before we have knee-jerk reactions? Can we not wait to spread rumor until the authorities have a chance to sort things out? Within two hours I heard from the right that the shooter was a Muslim and from the left that he had ties to the IRA. Personally, I think he was a green-skinned illegal alien from a planet in the Luhman binary star system. What he was, was a disturbed young man who killed nine innocent people and not a green-skinned, Muslim radical of Irish decent. My conservative side agrees with leaving the Second Amendment alone. My liberal side whispers that if he had only a knife or a rock we wouldn’t be talking about nine dead. My rational side believes that no one is coming for our guns. Is it too liberal to agree with the recent Winthrop Poll? I found it surprising that South Carolinians agreed with background checks and to extend, if necessary, the present three-day waiting period before taking the gun home. Most agreed with closing some of the gaps with gun shows. I guess my most liberal thought on gun control is that if you need to hunt with an assault rifle, you probably ought to spend that money buying meat rather than hunting for it. Else you will be picking bullets out of its hide all day long!
So, what are I? I don’t think I have figured it out yet. Maybe I should just be like the Popeye of old without the forearms. “I yam what I yam!” I don’t know what I yam either and don’t know how to write the cute little chuckle Popeye had after he said it. To be honest, after the nine deaths in Oregon, I don’t feel like chuckling at all. Maybe what I are is a realist.