Tag Archives: Politics

Thursday Morning Ramblings

September 6, 2012 D.A. Adams 4 Comments

I want to believe in the American Dream. I want to believe in the United States as the land of opportunity. However, throughout my nearly 40 years in this country, I’ve seen little proof that these notions still remain relevant for the majority of our citizens. There are exceptions, of course. Professional athletes still have rags to riches stories. So do pop musicians. And drug dealers. Outside of those three sectors of the economy, I see few opportunities for people like me, ordinary folk not born of wealth and privilege, to break through the ever solidifying socioeconomic class system in our society. I see virtually no upward mobility anymore, but ample downward cascading.

At the birth of our nation, two differing views of democracy vied for power. On one side, the Hamiltonians believed that only landed gentry should have the right to vote and hold elected office. Their rationale was that the working classes were too uncivilized and barbaric to self-govern. They needed a strong ruling class to make decisions for them and keep them productive members of society. If left to their own faculties, the Hamiltonians argued, the working classes would drink away their salaries, squander their resources, and create a shiftless nation of non-productive derelicts. One can argue that there is some wisdom to this notion, for we all know plenty of people today who fit quite nicely into this vision of America the Hamiltonians feared.

Fortunately for most of us, however, there was another vision, fostered by Thomas Jefferson. He and his followers believed that if we as a country cultivated leadership from every sector of society, providing education and opportunity for any ambitious enough to strive to better themselves, then our fledgling democratic-republic would break free from the old, feudalistic systems of Europe and create a new kind of society. In this society, individual citizens from all backgrounds would have the right to self-govern, and furthermore, these citizens would be given the tools through public education to make better decisions for themselves and their families. At the time, this notion was so new and so radical that even those it purported to elevate from second-class citizenship often derided it as the stuff of fairy tales.

When Jefferson was elected as our third president, his vision became the direction in which our country moved. Throughout our history, however, this battle between the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians has continued. It has changed and morphed and evolved over the last 200+ years, but at its core, the central debate has remained the same. Some believe that we need a wealthy elite to rule and lead, and others believe that even “commoners” have the ability to self-govern if given the proper tools. There are countless shades of gray between these two poles, with countless visions and variations on how to arrive at each end.

Today, it feels as if the Hamiltonians have won. Both of our major political parties seem to believe that the average person is incapable of self-governance. Throughout my lifetime, self-sufficiency has been attacked and eroded from each end of the spectrum. Now, the debate seems to be more about who should control the masses, big government or big business. In my experience, neither has proven to have my best interests at heart. In America today, I feel disenfranchised, powerless, and at the mercy of those in charge, which goes against everything I was taught about the foundation of our Constitution. In this upcoming election, neither candidate puts forth a vision of America that I believe in, and the election itself seems more like a circus sideshow than a real public discourse on the direction of our society.

I want my country back. I want a nation in which I feel in charge of my own destiny. I want the opportunity to ply my trades without overbearing regulations from the government and competition squelching nonsense from the corporations. I want a country that embraces innovation and technology again. I want a country that allows for religious freedom for all. I want a country in which a person can sink or swim based on their abilities and persistence, not on how much money they have to throw at a problem. I want a country that embraces education and free thought and encourages individual expression. I want the America I was promised as a child.

General Posts

Thursday Afternoon Ramblings

August 30, 2012 D.A. Adams 4 Comments

Before the separation anxiety created by losing my children, I had never really known anxiety before. Sure, I’d gotten nervous in certain situations, but I’d never experienced the unexplained waves of fear that appeared out of nowhere and made me edgy. For the first year after the boys were gone, excluding the times when they were back with me, I lived in a constant state of panic, worried about whether or not they were safe and healthy and happy. My stomach constantly burned from this fear, and I often awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, trembling. As I adjusted to my new reality, the anxiety waned, and ever so slowly, I began to feel “normal” again.

Recently, the anxiety has returned. This time, however, it’s not about my children, even though the sensation is much the same. I can’t say exactly why I feel this way, but for a few weeks now, I’ve not been able to shake it. There’s no one specific thing I’m worried about, more like a thousand little uncertainties that gnaw at me. From the erratic weather to the political sideshow to the sluggish economy, I feel like we’re heading for something bad in the next few months. While I can’t point to any quantifiable thing and say, “Here’s definitive proof,” I just have an overwhelming intuition that the proverbial dung is about to hit the fan.

I don’t believe in the Mayan calendar and don’t expect the world is about to fly apart, but I do feel like our nation, because of the internal strife and chasms we’ve created through our sensationalist parodies of debate and deliberation, is on the verge of a deep, fundamental shift. I can’t say for certain what that shift will be, perhaps martial law, perhaps financial collapse, perhaps civil war. I don’t know. I just know we cannot continue unraveling at the seams the way we have for the last few years. And again, I can’t point to any one thing, just a feeling I get from people I encounter who either give off vibes of being frazzled and panicked or seem like mindless drones on auto-pilot.

I hope I’m wrong. I want to feel positive and optimistic about the world and the future. I much prefer feeling positive energy, but right now, there simply isn’t much to feel good about. Everywhere I look, things are just out of balance and eroding into an uncivilized frenzy of self-interest. People are either mad as hell at those who disagree with them politically, distracted by TV, or apathetic to everything. Few people seem even content with their lives, and I don’t know anyone who feels positive about the direction we’re headed as a society. I wish I could look at the future and feel hopeful about it, but right now, tomorrow just looms bleak and ominous as we trudge onward.

I’m sorry for writing such a negative piece, but this is how I feel about our country right now. I can’t pretend like everything is okay when in my gut I have this feeling that something awful is about to happen.

General Posts

Monday Afternoon Ramblings

August 27, 2012 D.A. Adams 7 Comments

Here’s another illustration of what’s wrong with education today. For several years now, the trend has been towards more and more reliance upon technology for virtually every aspect of instruction, from attendance recording to delivery to assessment to grade calculation. The most current buzz-trend is “Mobilization,” which the best I can figure is allowing kids to watch YouTube videos and play games while they are supposed to be learning. The powers that be tout the importance of connecting with “digital learners” on their level, which to me sounds like “dumb it down and let the machines do all the work for them.” Then again, I’m a tad cynical. Anyway, from these trends to digitize the classroom, now, nearly every aspect of our classes is online to some degree.

This morning, on the first day of classes, the first opportunity to make an impression on many incoming freshmen who have been coddled their entire academic careers by All Children Left Behind and The Race to a Stop, our internet system was down. Statewide. As in ALL Tennessee Board of Regents schools had no internet access.

We couldn’t check email, access course content (including syllabi), administer pre-tests, and in some cases, even check attendance. Fortunately, since I refuse to swallow my dose of Kool-Aid, I was able to collect my first day writing samples by relying on the outdated analog system. You know, pen and paper. I go back to a point I make again and again. We can put all the bells and whistles and flashing lights in front of the kids we want, but at some point they have to learn how to think. By forcing us to move so much of our materials online, the powers that be have in effect made us dependent upon those systems to function. I’m certain that many younger teachers, those who only know the “Mobilization” methodology, were paralyzed this morning. I’m certain the chaos of that paralysis gave the students a terrible first impression, and those children, raised on an endless diet of entertainment and instant gratification, probably now believe college will be more of the same dysfunction they endured in high school.

As for me, since I still lecture and write on the board (I could point to the body of evidence that proves when students write things down in their own handwriting they are more likely to remember it, but why bother? The powers that be will keep pouring the digital Kool-Aid because there’s more money to be made from grants and such), I was barely bothered by the outage. My morning class ran pretty smoothly because I don’t need bells and whistles and flashing lights to teach. All I need is a board to write on and an instrument to write with. Teachers, you see, old-fashioned, student-centered, professional, dedicated educators, teach from a deeply-rooted love of and passion for their subject. Unfortunately, however, we seem to be a dying a breed.