Schools and Society

Here is how it’s done. Deny and Destroy reality then, moving right along, construct a new reality that suits your purposes. Hitler was a Grand Master of the technique as he constructed the Third Reich, the “Deutschland über alles” meme that is neither symbolically nor emotionally different from, “Make America Great Again”. Mussolini was not far behind in his similar accomplishments. Be the populist who gives the audience the binary world they so desperately want: Right or Wrong, Us or Them, Populists recognize the reality that their audience, their followers, don’t just want things to be simple, they are desperate for it! They want to believe because something is better than nothing, better than a complicated nuanced truth. The repetition of simplistic meaningless slogans, “Lock Her Up”, and “Make America Great Again”, binds them to you. Outright lies also bind your followers to an identity they can understand, embrace, and chant. It is these methods with their racist subtexts that inspire and normalize behavior thus far regarded as socially unacceptable.

Be sure to order ball caps and paraphernalia with your vacuous slogans prominently displayed. Identify groups of “others” and isolate them with racist subtext and degrading inference. Vilify and reject those groups as being illegitimate members of your society taking what is rightfully yours including jobs you won’t take. Demean immigrants and the countries they come from. Openly suggest your women and children are not safe with undocumented criminals lurking in the bushes. Create an energetic, irrational, but useful, distrust of “fake news”. Your sympathetic news outlets will repeat and validate the rant spreading it far and wide.

Once you have sufficiently vilified the “others” the next step is to attack familiar and foundational institutions. Call into question the integrity of the FBI, the CIA, public education, even the military as you undermine public faith and confidence in government itself. Also, mock and alienate foreign countries and their leaders. Use obfuscation and emotion to create mass cognitive dissonance to divert attention from what you and your colleagues are really up to. Keep repeating the lies. Discard the rules of civil discourse. Keep stirring the pot. Everything is in flux, dangerous, and vulnerable.

This is what we as a country have come to – not a celebration of Democracy but the destruction of Democracy. We are in the midst of an ongoing massive case of political propaganda that exploits “ressentiment”, a French word  that “expresses a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one’s frustration and anger”, an anger and ressentiment that can thus be easily directed and exploited.

My dictionary describes a demagogue as someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator in a society enlisting them to attack and resist those they are conditioned to believe are responsible for whatever reality they have been forced to live in. Demagogues don’t even spare children. With an ongoing all out attack on public education and children in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, nothing is safe, no one and nothing is sacred. Repeat after me the demagogue says, “USA, USA”, shouts the crowd until they are hoarse. Perhaps even delirious. It’s mind numbing manufactured cognitive dissonance and that, my friends, is the point. That is always the aim and purpose of deliberate manufactured anarchy out of which social control has historically emerged.

This is not Democracy. This is the destruction of Democracy.

What is all the current public angst about? The screaming, the waving of “MAGA” signs, the eruption of open racism and xenophobia? It seems as though, since the rise of Trump, society is being ripped apart at the seams. It is on the ideals of moral consideration that, over centuries, civil societies have been built and upon the abandonment of those that societies ultimately have destroyed themselves. By any measure we seem to have become a society on its way to becoming devoid of moral consideration over any sort of operational advantage, financial, political, legal, or otherwise. Consequently, when looking back at the idea of such obligation one wonders, if moral obligation can even be a part of our current political and social discourse. We presently have a president who, with his physical posturing, defiant simplistic and infantile rhetoric, and unhinged “Tweets”, has more in common with Mussolini than any other American president. This is a president whose power and ascension to office was borne on the back of resentment and his ability to manipulate it. This is a president whose complete lack of morals has been revealed in one salacious tell-all after another. I believe one can rightly ask if the president, his family and staff, and his Congressional accomplices have even heard of moral obligation. This question must be asked because there doesn’t seem to be a trace of such consideration. It is clear that their actions, motives, and behaviors have been put through a wash and rinse cycle eliminating all moral engagement. What we are witnessing is a complete lack of moral obligation an absence of moral consideration of the effects of their actions on the lives and welfare of others. It is as though these people live in a moral vacuum. This is, in its effects, sociopathic, the consequences of which are consequential. This is, in effect, sociopathic. The inevitable question then arises: Will this society ever consider the moral dimensions of behavior in matters such as politics, social welfare, or war in places where there is no demonstrable national interest aside from the business of war the cost of which when measured in national treasure and the lives of young men and women is immense. According to an international organization that monitors wars around the globe, the United States has killed something on the order of 2 million people post 9/11. Young men and women who could be making positive contributions to the betterment of this country right here, at home, are being used to make profit for the war industry. The F-35 fighter alone has cost in excess of $406 billion to date! The proposed military budget for 2018 is another $406 billion! Imagine what that money would do for public education, civil infrastructure, medical research and care, and so many other socially valuable activities. Our national fortune is being squandered not to make life better, here on this continent, in this country, where needs are demonstrably great and infrastructure is in disrepair and crumbling. It goes beyond the exercise in dribble-down economics because the dribble inevitably disappears as manufacturing jobs are shipped to countries where lower wages prevail. What then when the population of unemployed Americans reaches a critical mass? What then when social services are diminished and disappear? What then when there is no one left able to purchase the goods made overseas? That then is the definition and expression of a zero sum game. The question of moral obligation and engagement goes even further and deeper than the commercialization of war as billionaires and millionaires are currently sponsoring a war on public education. Everyone is an educational expert once their fortune exceeds some arbitrary amount. The most vocal of the self-appointed school reform zealots have zero qualifications as educators yet they exercise sufficient influence to destroy public schools. Where is the moral consideration in this? Public education is a foundational institution that has served this country since 1635 when the Boston Latin School in Massachusetts opened it doors. To attack public education for the purpose of profit goes beyond greed which is only one motive. What the self- anointed reformers are really after are children educated to be compliant and manipulable. Will this then be the death of democracy in this country? Could it be that Hayek was right, that we are on “The Road to Serfdom”? Can that possibly be inevitable?