It should really come as no surprise that the Texas GOP, which gave us W. could come up with such a racially insulting campaign button, but I still find myself obsessing over the sheer ignorance that allows a person to actually make such an object. Still there it was, proudly displayed at the Texas Republican State Convention. Has the person not read a newspaper since 1964? Or do they still believe we can go back to a segregated society?
Conservative groups continue to put up a fight over GLBT issues and the marriage wars are going to continue for a number of years, but they lost the Civil Rights War decades ago.
I cannot imagine what button they would have created had Hillary won. I’m really still a little befuddled as to whom they fear more – a strong woman or a black man.
Republicans who would come up with such a button remind me of the Japanese soldier, discovered on a desert island in the Pacific years after World War II ended. He was prepared to fight anyone who stumbled upon the island, unaware that the battles were over and Japan was back in the mainstream of the world. Nothing about the real world around him had changed his fervor and oath to die for his homeland.
He had an excuse. Japanese language newspapers are not regularly dropped on desert islands in the Pacific. He simply, loyally, maintained his commitment to the oath he had sworn to his emperor.
No Republican at a state level convention can claim such ignorance.
The only explanation that remains is pure hatred, unmitigated intolerance of anything that is not “me,” a darkened soul. As much as I am angered by this behavior, deeper down, I pity the people who act such a way. Can you imagine living every day in a world that is so different from what you demand it be, knowing that society has bypassed your antiquated beliefs?
While fads and trends come and go, when society makes a shift in one direction, it rarely returns to a state prior to that shift. Civil rights and women’s rights are two shifts that have been made in the last 50 years that cannot be reversed. Certainly full measures of social justice for women and people of color have not been met in the United States, but the trend has reached a point of no return. With the realization of a global economy, “white” is no longer synonymous with “majority.” It was only ever that way because it was synonymous with “power.”
Now that the Texas GOP has embarrassed itself once again on a global stage, they need to reflect what it is they truly believe. Social justice for all people reflects Republican fundamentals more than it does Democratic fundamentals, but in the last twenty years, while lauding the fundamentals, the Republicans have moved far from them. If they truly valued lesser government and greater individual responsibility, they would embrace social justice and true equality for all people. Without the barriers that protect so many of their own interests, those who are “entitled” would no longer have an excuse for the state in which they find themselves. Instead, the Right, in their grasp for power, keep policies in place that promote stratification of society, that promote an “us-vs-them” atmosphere, and that eternally leaves many behind.
And so they proudly wear a button that does not attempt to hide its racist bent and boldly proclaims their personal intolerance. This liberal is gonna be praying hard for your soul because that is not what Jesus would do.
After nine years out of any formal schooling, I began to work on a second Masters degree this week. I realized about the second day of class that never in my life had I gone so long outside some organized education. Those nine years have taken a real toll on my thinking processes.
In the interim there have been numerous professional development sessions and various conferences, but they were one-offs and usually did not require more than a few hours at a time. I’ve grown into the habit of critical, academic thinking in sprints rather than marathons. My mental stamina over the last few years has diminished to the point that I would compare it to the physical stamina of a sixty year old chain smoker. My mind periodically demands a walk break during the seven-hour class marathon.
Actually, in the last nine years, my mind has developed the habits of multitasking. Those habits make a single source focus nearly impossible. I find myself in class with my mind trying to get three steps ahead. I’m wondering how the lecture being given now is going to connect to a concept from the text later.
I spend so much time with sense-making an connecting various pieces of my department with one another since they do not often connect in an obvious way under older visions of public education. Some of my programs are process based while others are knowledge based. As a result the two do not often appear to have a direct connection to one another other than the ultimate outcome of getting student to take advantage of the postsecondary opportunities available. Still, fundamental math skills do not have much connection to completing the resume portion of a college application – at least in the eyes of a middle school math teacher.
I work to find that connection and also to present ways for delivering it through best instructional practices.
And so in the past week, I have had to reshape my thought processes to consider how to do pure academic study. I have always been a reader and a writer, but my academic and grammar habits have become increasingly sloppy over time. In my mind, just like in my home and office, I am picky about some things while letting others go.
We all have our clutter somewhere.
As the academic study becomes more intense over the semester and I actually have to start using APA style for writing, I’m going to have to relegate my mental clutter to some closet; I now have to find the right size closet to manage all the piles I have stacked in various places throughout my head. All that “stuff” does not go away it just gets stuck somewhere.
I should know the answer to this question, but is it possible to have a mental garage sale and pass on the clutter to someone else at a discount? I could post signs up and down my street:
Get your used mental mess! Saturday from 7:00 until it’s gone. Reasonable prices – negotiable.
And is it ethical to sell the junk left over from (former) friends or should I just donate it all so some poor soul? Too many people have not lived enough to develop clutter of their own so they can have some of the wilder thoughts I’ve had over the years. Maybe they could stand to have a bit of a jumpstart and thus begin to develop their own. As with sourdough, all it takes is a bit of starter.
Really though, I don’t want to part with anything floating around in my head, but I could stand to come up with a better organizational system. I can learn to encrypt it and put it on a jump-drive for later recall. While I’m giving the MacBook another shot at the moment, I think I will use a Windows filing system – unfortunately my brain was wired by Bill Gates not Steve Jobs.
All my metacognition over the past week has begun to pay off. I successfully managed to not study for four hours while sitting at a coffee shop! I thought about studying and the reading I needed to do. I transferred my calendar entries to the new calendar that spans the time I need now.
And I wrote this post. (Re)learning to think is much more fun than I thought it would be.
