Chris Herrington decided years ago that his reality was much more fun…
and he’s ready to tell you why.
Sit back and relax.
It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, the political climate in the United States has started to become less and less united all the time. The rich and the poor, the Christians and the Muslims, the democrats and the republicans, the liberals and the conservatives: we’ve got more cracks in our foundation than a 2 inch slab of concrete. We can’t agree on what the Constitution says, or the Bible, the social contract, memos, handshakes, or even gestures on the freeway. We seem to have a predication towards dissimulation, equivocation, ambiguity, and out and out fraud under the guise of either disingenuousness or beguiling disillusionment. If the words we use get any further from any approximation of reality, we will all turn into avatars in a fantasy world where only the rings from skipped rocks can apply for imaginary citizenship.
What seems most bothersome is the amount of anger involved in the national discussion. People don’t seem to believe that they will be listened to unless they are yelling, cursing, pot-shotting, or calling their fellow Americans Un-American. It’s as if we have given up civility for self-rightness and righteous indignation; instead of a civil debate, we have name calling, the classic stuff that creates shame, innuendo, indulgence, and gastric inflammation. It’s hard to say “on the one hand” in an atmosphere like this; it seems that no matter how we approach anything, there is going to be some stressful and potentially hateful vitriol that will pass for discussion in these modern times. Why can’t we let the truth just speak for itself?
Instead of inflammatory remarks and hurtful words, instead of rhetorical devices meant to get opponents to spontaneously explode, it seems to me that it would be more civilized to present our points of view in an open forum that would be without vehemence, without anger, without prejudice, without debasing comments, and without the intent to publically humiliate others. If the point is the get to the truth, why not keep that standard as the guiding principle of the debate? What we have instead is that each side will twist and screw the data and the interpretation of the information into a Gordian knot of cosmic proportions, and the next thing we know the indictments in the press have jumped all the way through some microcosm of individual destruction, character assassination, and public insinuation. In other words, we have now come to a place in modern life where being heard from our skewed position must include maiming others in the process. Unless we have made a public spectacle, we don’t think we have said a word that will be heard. The blurbs, one-liners, the catch phrases, and the sound bites of the modern world have taken over for substance, consideration, and truth seeking.
What I would like to see is a good old fashioned sit-down-at-the-table debate, not something that allows the speakers to get up and make a mockery out of the process of debating the substance of life. Minutes, rebuttals, glares, and finger pointing are not real debate. I would rather have pages of documents with real commitment, not the debasing of opponents with projections and inflammatory voicings. Let’s take anything serious, whatever it is: education, healthcare, corporate oversight, international or national security, true patriotism, or foreign policy. Let’s further take these arenas of thought and discuss them thoroughly with the guiding principle that we will at least understand why we individually think the way we do. Both, for example, the republicans and the democrats are rational human beings, although they each have their own reasons for believing as they do. As long as we are all embittered rivals who are trashing and thrashing each other, there will be no way for us to come to any consensus. It seems to most people that that is indeed the point. If each side holds out until the other collapses, then victory will be certain, but at what cost? The average American may not be able to hold on while the republicans and democrats wait for each other to pass out. While these two power houses of funding and security fight it out, the public is being thrown into insecurity and instability. It’s Nazi this that Hitler that. Real American this and invaders that. In the mean time, the Average guy is beginning to gulp the ever-rising tide as it clears his chin and mounts an assault upon his mouth. The girls are looking to starlets for hope and solace, but then, the unrealistic dream dead, the real jobs for most would-be actresses and pop stars are waitressing and that much older profession. Waitressing is an honorable job, if it’s what you aim for and not settle for. I do wonder who can most afford the path of the others. The irony of this runs all over us, doesn’t it? The boys all want to be musical gods, kings of the court, or dukes of the streets. We are way passed thinking that we can have “every man for himself” and “only the willing and able will survive.”
I understand why it is that public welfare, school, and civil service jobs are under public scrutiny. We have reached capacity. We don’t need everyone in the system. We are stuffed to the gills. The Irish fled hunger. The Jews fled annihilation. The Germans fled national poverty. Central Americans fled war. Americans may soon be fleeing too. We cannot afford to stay in a place that has no room for us. We are packed with immigrants. Our H1B visas go as fast as they can be handed out. The land is all but taken up, and even though we have just had a boom and bust break down, the world is now at a time when there is not going to be any new land for sale and everywhere the multimedia and digital worlds are shrinking us down to a Kb of binary code on someone’s hard drive. We face the end of us as an empire: the Greeks, the Romans, the British. If we don’t reign in our spending, our give-aways, and our lackadaisical attitudes, we might be next. It’s time to tighten the belts and put away the childish thinking that someone else is going to pay your way. If you think that someone is going to tote your note for you, you are sadly mistaken. “It’s every man for himself.” That being said, if we sink the majority of the population, then we indeed sink the nation.
We bailed out everyone but the little guy. They don’t call him “the little guy” for nothing! The upper 20% earn more than $70,000. These are almost all professional jobs or highly skilled jobs. Many of them require many work hours and a higher education. For whatever reason, those below this magic line got less education and worked less hours, although many people work monster hours and make minimal pay. Education is the way through, but not as many people as you might think are either moved to go through schooling or equipped to go through it.
This means that the educational system has failed in at least one major way: Most people do not see the true necessity of earning and learning; they have failed to understand what an education is. It may also be true that many people believe rather that they are doomed to repeat what they have been born into, that is that they cannot change their circumstances. They may be so pessimistic about their potential that they have lost, if they ever had it, that zeal so many promising students show early on in their schooling, the spark to learn.
If nothing else, we need to understand the impact of continued learning to keep us from falling prey to diseases and disabilities later in life. A mind is a terrible thing for someone else to waste, but it is a crying catastrophe of bewilderment to waste one’s own mind. We might remember that “imaginary citizenship” mentioned earlier. If we get down the road and have nothing but delusion and regret, misapprehension and depression, helplessness and frustration, we might well look back on those days when we spent all that time throwing language around, scowling at our adversaries, and think about how much we could have gotten done if we had not lost our ever-loving minds arguing with a brick wall and snarling like a wolverine.
I don’t think we are going to hell in a hand-basket, but we might be bringing hell to our side of town. Even if we cut social services to the bone, we at least need to train these people to do something useful before we turn them loose to raid our homes while we are at work. Otherwise, we will be paying for every meal, the roof over their heads, and the TV they are watching, in jail. Screaming at people hasn’t solved anything because it just taught them to scream back; how about showing people just how helpful an education can be by sitting down and explaining it to them with understanding and concern. Sometimes we might wonder what we were dreaming about, America.
Having completed 32 years of public school service, Chris Herrington lives, with his wife, in Appleby, Texas, and his writing consists of blogging and essay writing concerning an array of topics including education, mediation, self-development, and human interests. He teaches at the Martin School of Choice, plays racquetball, and enjoys his job.
Chris Herrington can be reached at herrington@everythingnac.com
