Thought Police

The FBI has a new plan to weed out divergent thoughts and control our minds.  In a story for AlterNet, Sarah Lazare reports on a plan by the FBI to spy on high school students across America, looking for signs of unorthodox ideologies.  It is "instructing" schools nationwide to report students who "criticize government policies" and speak against "Western corruption."

Ostensibly meant to spot signs of radicalization early and prevent terrorism, this makes any student suspect who has political views out of sync with the established, accepted modes of thought approved by the Party...I mean, by the Authorities.

Let us be clear, this new policy targets young Muslims, but it puts all of our young people at risk.  Among the views now included as suspicious are "anarchism," "animal rights extremism," and "environmental extremism."  This will strengthen the nefarious school-to-prison pipeline, and drags us a few steps closer to an Orwellian dystopia ala 1984.  Treating criticism with suspicion is an easy path to criminalizing dissent.  The Ministry of Love will be sending out its Thought Police any day now to ensure that we love Big Brother. The AlterNet article intervied Hugh Handeyside, staff attorney for the ACLU national security project, who speaks on the issue.

“Broadening the definition of violent extremism to include a range of belief-driven violence underscores that the FBI is diving head-first into community spying. Framing this conduct as ‘concerning behavior’ doesn’t conceal the fact that the FBI is policing students’ thoughts and trying to predict the future based on those thoughts.”

This would not be the first time the FBI curtailed our civil liberties in the name of security.  As early as 1946, J Edgar Hoover was compiling lists of American suspected of disloyalty, and in 1950, proposed a plan to suspend habeas corpus to detain over 12,000 Americans.  In the 60s through 1971 J. Edgar Hoover ran major campaigns against the civil rights movement, including both Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panther Party with his Counter Intelligenge Protocol (COINTELPRO).  Hoover was famously quoted saying that "justice is incidental to law and order."

Since 9/11, the FBI has had unprecedented leeway in compiling information about American citizens in the name of national security.  The Patriot Act, the controversial domestic spying law made us a surveillance nation, and multiple sources allege that our civil liberties have been repeatedly violated ever since.  A report by the EFF claims that the FBI may have committed over 40,000 such violations between 2001 and 2008.  This included approximately 800 confirmed and reported violations of the law, executive order, or regulations regarding the acquisition of information.  Of these, about 150 were violations of Constitutional protections, FISA, or other laws governing intelligence gathering.  The EFF believes these 800 confirmed cases to be an underrepresentation.  Additionally, the report includes some 7000 more incidents the FBI claims were "potential" violations of civil liberties.  By extrapolation, the EFF reaches their estimate of 40,000 instances of misconduct.

The truth is that we don't know how often or how severely the FBI currently violates our rights, or to what degree such even exist any more.  However, it isn't hard to see that this new procedure, left unchallenged, would exacerbate an already tense issue, and put the heat to evaporating privacy rights.

I oppose the marginalizing of, and the casting of aspersions upon those who express alternate viewpoints.  We should not face suspicion for calling a spade a spade, and pointing out corruption where we see it.  Criticism of the government is not a dangerous act, it is our civic duty.  This policy is shameful.

Pledging Allegiance

A few years ago, a push to remove the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance stirred up controversy relating to the relationship of church and state, and whether the technically-not-mandatory-but-do-what's-expected-of-you pledge in school was a violation of religious freedom.  Spoiler alert: they didn't take it out.

There is a bigger issue than the tacked-on "under God" in the rote recitation of the Pledge: the REST of the pledge.  Let's break it down.

"I pledge allegiance..."
The term allegiance is derived from its root word "liege," which Merriam-Webster defines as: "having the right to feudal allegiance or service" or "obligated to render feudal allegiance and service." Dictionary.com defines the noun liege as "a feudal lord entitled to allegiance and service" and the adjective form as "owing primary allegiance and service to a feudal lord."  Merriam Webster defines allegiance itself as "the obligation of a feudal vassal to his liege lord."

At least I'm not a serf.  Those guys are fucked!

The feudal system is antithetical to the principles of the American government.  The keeping of the people in serfdom by a king and his appointed lords and vassals constitutes a form of slavery which is thoroughly incompatible with the concept of liberty, and with the foundations of the United States of America.  The Declaration of Independence states that:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

The key phrase here is "from the consent of the governed."  It is the very basis of the American system that the government is only legitimate through the consent of the American people.  As a form of republican government, meaning that the vox populi is the true ruler of the state, and that is expressed by the people's chosen representatives, who rule in their name with with their voice.  If the people are displeased, they are within their rights and powers to remove that representative from office.  But if the people are "obligated to render feudal service" then they are not free citizens.  And to whom are they promising this service?

"...to the flag of the United States of America."

To the Flag.  Not the people, or even the nation itself, but the symbol of that nation.   An argument can be made that this is a usage of metonymy, and the flag stands in for, and even means the United States as a whole.  That is all well and good, but placing undo reverence on the symbol can lead to a distancing from the reality of the thing itself.

Symbols are used by those who understand their power.  Because we have invested so much energy into The Flag--every child in America has chanted their promise of service to it every morning at school for years and years and years--politicians use this fixation on the flag and can very easily confound and assail our senses by using this symbol as a shield to deflect suspicion.  You can see this in display when candidates for office wear prominent flag pins, or more extremely, by competing over who can display the most, or the biggest flags.

Do you think he's compensating for something?

"...and to the Republic for which it stands..."
Oh right, there's actually a government!  So we are also pledging to serve the republic; the system of representative government meant to serve us.  Hey wait a minute...

Yes.  They've actually gotten us to turn it around in our heads so that instead of making the government promise to serve the American people, the people promise daily to serve the government.  And this happens on a daily basis throughout the nation at our schools, at an age when we are at our most malleable and impressionable.  Something sounds hinky.

Abby's on it!  McGee is there too.

"...one nation under God..."
Ok, so this one is divisive.  Some people like it and will bristle if you try to take it out.  Apparently these people represent a majority of some sort.  At least in government.  But while there isn't anything objectionable as such in "one nation," the phrase "under God" is another matter.  The phrase was added in 1954 by congressional legislation which is a violation of the First Amendment, which states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  Why does this violate the amendment?  Because it gives national respect to the idea of god which is present in many, but not all religions.  It imposes upon American patriotism a religious hue, and not just in general, but specifically monotheistic religion.  Furthermore, this is not simply stating the existence of such a god, but that the United States is a nation under that god; subservient to him.  If the nation was meant to be religious in nature, and meant to be second to the will of God there would have been some mention of god or religion somewhere in the US Constitution.  There isn't.  Don't believe me?  Go look for it.  I'll wait.

"...indivisible..."
Well...

Secession didn't work.  We had a whole Civil War about it.  Though technically if you have tens of thousands of Americans killing each other en masse over whether the nation can be divided or not, isn't the nation already divided?  So are we talking about legally here?  Because that's true-ish if you're assuming that the United States is eternal or something, but chances are that some day; years, centuries down the line, it will cease to be, and then all bets are off.

They certainly can't mean politically.  The whole basis of the US was so that there could be disagreement politically.  And while George Washington might have told us not to form political parties, we didn't listen.  Now Americans are SUPER divisible!  They divide along party lines, issues, and Donald Trump's hair.

You're responsible!  You're the one to blame!  It's YOUR FAULT!

"...with liberty and justice for all."
That's cute.  It's just not true.

It's incredibly naive to think, much less chant as a daily ritual, that everyone actually gets liberty and justice in America, just by virtue of the fact that this is America.  Regarding liberty, that is becoming questionable in the ever-more-police-state-looking modern day America.  Since the Patriot Act (at least) the government has been spying on us & accumulating information to determine whether we are good loyal citizens or not, and since the NDAA the Feds can hold you indefinitely and without charges on the suspicion of terrorism.  This is not to mention that the US leads the world in mass incarceration.  We have more prisons than colleges, and some for-profit prisons are now suing the government for not providing enough prisoners.  That's right, there is actually a demand for prisoners.  A whole industry around making sure that large numbers of citizens are locked up, and making sure that we have enough citizens locked up.  It's disgusting that we have an industry that creates this kind of demand for crime and punishment.

Don't get me started on justice!  Was there justice for Tamir Rice and his family?  Not only the the police officer shoot dead an innocent twelve year old boy on sight, but the state actually sued his family for the cost of the ambulance.  Insult to injury much?  And the officer involved was never even tried for the unnecessary killing.  Let me make sure that is understood: he wasn't found not guilty in court, he was never taken to court at all.  They just refused to investigate.  And that's just ONE of the many many cases of injustice throughout America, so to say that this is a land that achieves liberty and justice for everyone is just a lie.

So there is something problematic with almost every part of the Pledge, not just those two little words that have received so much of the attention, but we continue to, if not force then at least coerce, our students to repeat it day, after day, after day, often without really knowing why they are doing it, or what it is they are really pledging.  We need to rethink the pledge.  

Protesting the TPP

Going down to Rancho Mirage, CA today to protest the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would sell out not only our environment and economy, but even our own national sovereignty to the depredations of corporate greed.  This is a disaster of legislation that must not be allowed under any circumstances.

If you are near the area, I urge you to join us.  President Obama and leaders from Southeast Asia will be present to discuss getting the deal ratified.  Let's show them that we don't want any part of this corporate coup.

Bread and Circuses

Today's the big day!  The Super Bowl!  A titanic struggle of champions for glory and the adoration and adulation of the masses.  A test of skill, teamwork, and spirit to determine once and for all, or at least a year, who is the greatest of them all.  That is the premise of the event.  But we all know that the Super Bowl is really about the commercials.  It is the one time of year where we actually WANT to watch the commercials, maybe more than the actual event.  This time, the companies make it their special mission to entertain us as much as market to us.  This day we forget our troubles.  This day we gather and consume, and revel in team spirit and merchandising.  

In the days of Imperial Rome, the ways the upper class (Patricians) kept the lower classes (Plebians) in check was a system known as "bread and circuses." By giving them enough to not starve to death, and something to keep them entertained, they largely prevented the masses from rising up to overthrow their oppressive overlords.  "Circuses" in those days, by and large, meant gladiatorial combat.  Throughout history, even today, nations have provided "circuses" as means for people to let off steam, so they forget they are under control.  At no time is the parallel more apparent than in a game of football, and none more so than the Super Bowl.  A team of men charging at each other in mock military patterns, slamming violently into one another, often resulting in injury, these are America's gladiators.  

The problem is, that by going along with this, we are playing into the hands of a system meant to keep us in check.  The corporations who own this country are especially strong today, and will make us love them, if only for a day, and convince us to keep consuming.  Buy buy buy, spend money you don't have on shit you don't need.  It's something you've been conditioned to do, and we're made to love the occasions that reinforce this behavior the most.  

I'm sure this message will be upsetting to many people, because you may love the super bowl.  You may love the game, or just the commercials.  And that's actually ok.  Enjoy the game.  But be aware of its roll.  Why is it this such a big deal?  Because it gives you something to rally behind instead of a real cause.  It gives you a distraction, a place to spend your emotions, so that you continue to be apathetic to the way the corporations and the government are screwing you over.  We all need distractions now and then, or else we'd go mad.  Just make sure you don't forget what you're being distracted from.  

Education Revolution

Growing up in Oregon, going to a teeny tiny, making-it-through-by-the-skin-of-its-teeth private school, I never knew why kids on TV complained about going to school.  Then I moved, and started attending a public middle school in 8th grade, and got my first taste of what everyone was talking about.  It wasn't until much later, though, when I got a job as a substitute teacher, and got to see the public school system at every level, from kindergarten all the way through high school, that I really understood.

The public school system has its roots in the 1830s, when Horace Mann brought back the system of the Prussian Empire in order to prepare children en masse for factory work in the midst of the Industrial Revolution.  The advantage of the system was that it was quite effective at instilling literacy in large numbers of children very quickly; however, the real reasons for the system's staying power may be much more insidious.

The Obedience Factory

There are many, including author John Taylor Gatto, who was awarded multiple Teacher of the Year prizes during his 30+ years as a teacher in New York City, who have come to realize and write very openly about the negative effects of our school system.  In his article"How public education cripples our kids, and why" Gatto points to several corrupt facets of the education system, evidenced by the 1918 writings of Alexander Inglis, in which are listed the six key functions of compulsory public education.  Paraphrased, these are:

1. To condition automatic responses to authority, so that obedience is not a choice.
2. To homogenize students and increase conformity.
3. To determine each student's role in life after school.
4. To prepare them for that role.
5. To weed out those students who cannot or will not conform to the above expectations.
6. To establish an elite group to control the others, and perpetuate the system.

This is to make people susceptible to manipulation by corporate bosses and the politicians who are in their pockets, and render the society docile, predictable, and complacent.  It was established to limit the potential effect of democracy in America, and make the masses pliable to the will of their corporate owners.  Schools are complicit in this, functioning as factories producing  a product in demand by corporations.  And as if this wasn’t awful enough, it’s even losing some of its relevance, as the biggest and most powerful corporations have so changed the industrial process that droves of obedient American workers are no longer required.  Most major corporations outsource most of their production process to other countries, where labor can be paid inhumanly low wages.  Those companies that do produce in the United States are largely mechanized, meaning that humans are largely irrelevant at many stages of production.  So now, not only are millions of children being indoctrinated to be obedient workers, but they are being prepared for lives and careers that aren’t even there.

So the system has from the very beginning been designed to control you, and make you roll over to the whims and mind-control of the corporation owners.  But even this does not give the full picture of just how fucked up the system is, and just how badly education in America has gone wrong.  The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union represented a colossal standoff of superpowers, with the entire world at stake.  The United States could not afford to lose.  So the capitalist masters pushed the schools to focus their studies on English Language and Mathematics, to produce large numbers of high-quality spokesmen for capitalism and engineers and rocket scientists to win the Space and Arms Races.  This made sense at the time, but the Cold War ended over twenty years ago, and yet we focus on English and Mathematics with more fevered intensity and exclusivity than ever.  Why haven't we reverted from this outdated policy?

Part of it can be traced to the Reagan administrations 1983 report "A Nation at Risk" which due to a mathematical error misrepresented public school performance on standardized tests measuring math and English skills.  Though performance had improved for each demographic group (divided by income levels) the larger size of the low-income demographic, which consistently has lower average test scores than higher-income demographics, skewed the data to appear that performance had dropped, and schools were failing.   YES!  Magazine goes into detail on this.

So, while America played chicken with Soviet Union in its final years, at home, our education policies doubled down on the policy of focusing on English and Math, and over the past thirty years have put steadily more pressure on schools to perform in these areas, as they are what the standardized tests measure.  This was worsened by No Child Left Behind and the adoption of Common Core curriculum in recent years.  So now schools have gradually cut programs to focus with tunnel-visioned exclusivity on only two criteria that are now being used to define success.

The State of Things

As a substitute, here is what I have observed about the curriculum offered at each level of public education:

Elementary School: Elementary school is where the above is most pronounced of all.  From grades 2 to 6 English and Math are virtually the only subjects taught.  Students are being urged to learn basic algebra in third grade; something I never learned until middle school; and I went on to take calculus, so I'm no slouch in mathematics.  Per the Common Core, teachers all across the district teach from the same set of books, and are expected to teach the same lesson on the same day.  Once or twice a week, students receive PE, and once a week, they have computer lab, in which they learn...English and Math.  Art classes are nonexistent.  Music is nonexistent, with the possible exception of a Christmas concert.  Dance is nonexistent.  Theater is nonexistent, except for one or two optional after school plays a year.  If you don't care about the arts (which you should) then you should at least care that students are hardly taught a thing about history or science, and when they are, they are taught poorly.  These subjects are taught as lists of facts for students to memorize, rather than skills and perspectives for them to apply and take with them.  This leads to student boredom and disengagement.  Many students are burning out by the end of 6th grade.

Middle School: From a teaching standpoint there are ways that Middle School is the worst of the worst.  I have seen droves of students who have absolutely no regard for learning or their education.  Many students who come from disadvantaged families are only interested in escaping from a bad home life, so are much more interested in chatting with friends than learning anything.  However, when they are quiet enough to learn, it is because they are cowed and afraid of reprisal or punishment.  In my district, there are no Art or dance programs, and the Drama programs are present in name alone.  The Drama class is not given in a conducive environment, and the students are not interested in it.  It is taken on the assumption that it is an "easy" class.  Music fares rather better, at least.  But by and large, students by this time have had drudgery beaten into them, and have lost any appreciation for the arts.  They have already had the creative spirit amputated, and seem incapable of forming original thoughts.

High School: High School is marginally better.  Though many of the behavioral issues in certain students have been amplified, the presence of actual science, history, and a variety of arts classes make a difference.  However, due to the effect of the system, these are still often taught poorly, and do not encourage student engagement or excitement, and students are more jaded and disaffected than ever.  Several are starting to become acutely aware that this system is not meant to be interesting or helpful to them.  Even now, despite the actual existence of history, science, art, and theater classes, none of these matter, per se, as the High School Exit Exam, the SATs, the ACTs, and virtually all other measures of how well a student has done in school, still measure only their abilities in English and Math.  By the time they graduate, they will be able to describe the inside of a leaf, use the quadratic equation, and identify a synecdoche, but they will not know how to pay their taxes, apply for a mortgage, or balance a budget.  They will not have any valuable job skills, as each level of education they've gone through has prepared them for nothing but the next level of education, and most of that consists of knowing how to take a test. 

Revolution!

A series of incremental and gradual reforms will not do.  American society has for over a century been dominated by a system that encourages sameness, and has entrenched us in a culture of indolence and complacence, where we may complain about the problems, but never do anything about them.  Instead we trust our elected officials to handle things, which they never do, because they are in the pockets of the corporations, and the corporations don't want that.  We must stand up for ourselves and for our children!

We must change the way we teach our kids.  Throw off an oppressive system and prove to kids that we appreciate their differences, creative talents, and their passionate endeavors. Give them the opportunity to express themselves, and to find the joy in learning.  Teach them to experiment and discover, instead of replicate.  We must save them from a system that will break them, and inure them against individual thought or innovation; make them fear the unique, the creative, and the different; and hamstring their ability for critical thinking.

This system has entrenched us in partisan politics, where we blindly follow our chosen party down the road to oblivion as we swallow their lies again and again, and choose awful candidates on the premise that they are better than the alternative.  You have been tricked into accepting this false dichotomy and to believe these authority figures when they tell you that this is the way it is, and it cannot change, but it can.  All it needs is your action.  It needs all of our action.  So step forward and do it.  Do it today.