Teaching Civics

The first time I heard that many schools were no longer teaching Civics, I was amazed.  I can’t remember detailed facts from my high school civics class, but I remember Mr. Gordos telling us how lucky we were to live in a town with a variety of ethnic groups and religions living in harmony.  

In college I was showing another student my high school yearbook.  My classmates included Carazo, Merluzzi, Nogueira, Sarik, Krawchuk, Bobita, Kinek, Constenbader, and Muniz.  He said, “Didn’t you have any Americans in your class?”  I just stared at him.

The Times today had a conversation between Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens.  Stephens said that while the world would obviously be a better place when Trump was no longer president, he thought our problems are so much deeper than that one man and his administration.

He added, “My view is that everything started going wrong when we abandoned the cause of teaching civics.”

Do schools even discuss personal responsibility, caring about the community, service, self-reliance, participation in self-government?  I am not talking about mumbling the Pledge of Allegiance before meetings or standing for the National Anthem.  I’m talking about citizenship, about the kind of patriotism that we saw in Minneapolis during the ICE raids.  Perhaps they are still learning that kind of citizenship in Minnesota.  I’m not so sure about the rest of the country. 

God Wasted a Huge Opportunity

The poet Katha Pollitt has noted that God wasted a huge moral opportunity with the ten commandments.  She wrote:  “How different history would have been had he clearly and unmistakably forbidden war, tyranny, taking over other people’s countries, slavery, exploitation of workers, cruelty to children, wife-beatings, stoning, treating women–or anyone–as chattel or inferior beings.”

Instead we get one about honoring the Sabbath and another about not coveting your neighbor’s wife’s ass.  I’m a little shaky on that last one; I think that’s what it says.  In any case, Pollitt has a point.

Causes for failure in battles–A review

On Jan. 9 of this year I posted a list of reasons for failures in battle.  The list was from a course by Dr. Gregory S. Aldrete I was listening to.  Given what has happened in Trump’s war with Iran, I think it is time for a review.  It is amazing how well this list explains the on-going failure in American policy.  This is textbook.

1.  Failures in planning.  Includes failure to define objective and failure to pay attention to intelligence and the strengths of the enemy.

2.  Failures in leadership.  Includes incompetence, working above one’s ability, and inability to work with other leaders.

3.  Failures in execution.  Includes such problems as splitting one’s forces, moving too early or too late, and not knowing when to cut one’s losses.  Reinforcing failure is a common theme.

4.  Failures to adapt.  Change occurs, and a leader must be ready to adjust to meet those changes.

check, check, check, check.

This war will be a subject for study in military colleges for decades.  I doubt there are many times that all four factors come into play at once, but here we are.

Hannah Arendt on public lying

In Hannah Arendt’s last known interview, recorded for French television in 1973, she spoke about the problem of governments lying.  Here is what she said:

     If everyone always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes anything at all anymore–and rightly so, because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, to be “re-lied,” so to speak.  So a lying government which pursues different goals at different times has constantly to rewrite its own history. That means that the people are deprived not only of their capacity to act, but also their capacity to think and to judge.  And with such a people you can then do what you please.  

Have we reached the point where no one believes anything at all anymore?    Think about it.

Neocolonialism in Venezuela

Obviously Karl Marx got it wrong.  He predicted that workers in industrialized countries would be ever more exploited and impoverished.  Finally they would revolt and take over the “means of production,” ushering in a fair and equitable economic system.  Unfortunately for Marxist thought but fortunately for the workers, the lives of most workers gradually improved.  

How to explain this??  V.I. Lenin said the reason the lives of workers improved was because of colonialism.  Counties like Britain, France, and the U.S. exploited their colonial possessions.  The populations of the developed counties benefited from owning the Third World.  Once Africa, Asia, and Latin America asserted their power, Lenin thought, international capitalism would be destroyed.

Didn’t happen.  

Marxists then came up with the theory of “neo-colonialism.”  Why “own” a colony with all the expense and military activity that accompanied colonial possessions when you could simply exploit the “Third World” with economic controls?  If you can import the raw materials (copper, oil, rare earth, human labor) and sell finished products, capitalism can charge ahead.

What the Trump administration is doing in Venezuela would seem to fit the term “neo-colonialism.”  We extract the oil, and a client Venezuelan government goes along with the scheme.  The average American benefits from cheap petroleum imports, the company procuring the petroleum makes money, and the average Venezuelan citizen gets some table scraps.

I predict Cuba will be next. 

Now You Know

This evening our daughter told us about a tee shirt she is ordering.  The message is this:  “If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done in 1930s Germany, you’re doing it right now.”

Dolly Parton, A.I., and Lake America

A five-day road trip to Indianapolis in late August was just what I needed, but the earth continued to rotate and events continued to unfold. 

First, Dolly Parton died.  In 2019 the New York Times ran a story about one thing we all could agree on:  Everyone loved Dolly Parton.  One of the obits talked about an audience with rednecks in trucker hats with confederate flags interspersed with urban libs, and every body singing along with “I Will Always Love You.”  Cynical as I am, I can’t think of one bad thing about Dolly Parton.  Ok, maybe the “Coat of Many Colors.”

Second, Bill Gates warned that A.I. not only threatens jobs but also the future of humanity.  Bill Gates said this.  Is anyone listening?  Is there money to be made?  If yes then no one is listening.

Third, Trump has renamed Lake Ontario.  It is now Lake America.  I fear we will get this mixed up with the Gulf of America.  I also am bothered that one of the Great Lakes is Superior to Lake America.  Perhaps it could be named Lake Inferior.  Since we already have an American River in California, I don’t think Trump will rename any rivers, but the Great Dismal Swamp would definitely attract more tourists if it were called the Great American Swamp.  Perhaps I’ll write a letter.