The rising stars of American politics

I'm sure that many of you are wondering what's going to happen in the 2016 presidential election, likely to be a race between either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders (for the Democrats) and whichever of the 2,781 people who have declared they're seeking the Republican nomination manages to come out ahead.  I can't get all that worked up about it, myself.  I've been through this process enough times that to me, most politics seems to boil down to "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."  And every time someone is elected and there are dire predictions by the opposition about what's going to result, what ends up happening is...

... pretty much what always happens in government.  Namely, bureaucratic gridlock.  For example, take all the hoopla about how Obama is going to repeal the Second Amendment and steal everyone's guns.  This has been a running theme of the anti-Obama cadre for what, seven years now?  And if you look around you, you'll find that everyone is as heavily armed as ever, and the Second Amendment is still firmly in place.

If Obama wants our guns, dude better get his ass in gear.  He's only got a little over a year left.

Now, I won't say that politics doesn't matter.  You can definitely see the situation in the Middle East having gone a different direction had the Bush administration not launched a war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, for example.  Whether it would have been better or worse is a matter of contention, but I don't think anyone can argue that it made a difference.

But that's the thing, isn't it?  Whoever gets elected, we still have the chaotic nature of world events to deal with, and the inherent unpredictability of how everyone's going to respond.  Add that to the treacle-like speed of progress in the halls of government, and it's no wonder that politics, when viewed from above, looks like a giant, extremely slow-moving pinball game.

[image courtesy of photographer Tom Arthur and the Wikimedia Commons]

Of course, that doesn't stop people from being curious about where things are going.  And I'm here to tell you today that you can relax.  It's all settled.  We know who's going to win in 2016.

Because the psychics have weighed in.

Three psychics were interviewed in The Washington Post, and gave their prognostications about the outcome of the election.  And because at this point they've got as much chance of being right as anyone else, I present to you: the results of the 2016 American presidential election.

First, we have the wisdom of "Angel Eyedealism," who has pink hair and says that astrology is "pseudoscience based upon two exact sciences."  Which should give you confidence right there that she knows what she's talking about.  And Ms. Eyedealism says that she drew up "natal charts" for Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and Donald Trump, and in her opinion, Clinton is a shoo-in.

"Hillary has Jupiter in the ninth house, the house of politics, now, and it is heading to conjunct her M.C. [medium coeli, or "middle of the sky"]," Eyedealism said. "I'm getting goosebumps."

Ooh, me too!  I always feel that way when I get conjuncted by Jupiter!

Clinton's looking good in other respects, too.  "Jupiter has already conjuncted Pluto, so she has luck and power behind her, and it will conjunct Saturn, so she's serious...  She has luck and a motherfucking plan."

So that's pretty unequivocal.

Bush, on the other hand, doesn't have much going for him except that he got conjuncted by an asteroid, or something, which sounds kind of painful.  And Uranus is in his Eighth House, which apparently means people will be giving him money.  But otherwise, he's not showing up very well, astrologically.  Trump, on the other hand has a "trine," which means three planets making an equilateral triangle.  This is good, for some reason, but she still thinks he won't win.

And what about all of the other people who were born in New York City on the same day as Trump? the interviewer asked.  Why aren't they all filthy rich, running for president, and sporting a hairstyle that looks like they're wearing a roadkill possum on their heads?

"Remember, not everyone lives out the potential of their chart," Eyedealism said.  "We have choices.  Some people who could have been Donald Trump made choices not to be."

Which certainly seems like a good choice to me.

Then, we turn to Angelia Johnson, a numerologist.  "I have been a psychic professional healer and adviser for over 25 years," Johnson told the reporter, "and have now graduated to psychic matchmaking."

So you can see right away that she's completely qualified to select the next president of the United States.

And Johnson's also going for Clinton, even though Jeb Bush's "number is a three."  "Because he's a three, he's connecting with people mind, body and spirit," Johnson said.  "His heart chakra is viving."

Which sounds like maybe he should see a doctor.  

Chris Christie, on the other hand, has a third-eye chakra, and his number is a four.  Don't ask me why that's important, but Johnson would like to see a Clinton/Christie combo, not that that's likely.

Last, the reporter spoke with a Tarot card reader, Angela Lucy, who not only reads cards but is guided by the Archangel Michael.  "He's a big truth-sayer," Lucy says.  "No B.S. from Archangel Michael."

So right away, we're off to an authoritative start.  She did the Republican hopefuls first, or at least the top few, and found out that Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, and Donald Trump were "contenders," that Ben Carson was going to do "okay," and that there's something going on with Scott Walker's wife.  She didn't say what.  As far as the Democrats, she said that Clinton was in for some kind of emotional upset, and Sanders doesn't have the cojones (direct quote) to win.

So let's cut to the chase... who will win?  Lucy drew the "Wheel of Fortune" card, upside down.  Which means, "I get only a 10 percent chance and this card came upside down ... it means turning in reverse."

Whatever the fuck that means.

So in the end, we had two votes for Clinton, and one for things being up in the air.  I think we can all agree that this is a pretty definitive result, especially given that we cross-checked our results using not just one but two other methodologies.  That's how the scientific method works, right?

Me, I'm longing for the days when Pat Paulsen used to run for president.  Anyone my age will probably remember Paulsen, a comedian who threw his hat into the ring every presidential election between 1968 and 1996, and actually got votes every time from people whose attitude was "I'll vote for anyone but the clowns who are actually running."  We need someone with Paulsen's commitment to the process.  Someone with cojones.  Someone whose heart chakra is viving.  Someone who has trines in all of their asteroid conjunctions.

Someone who has a vision, who is clear-minded, and who knows exactly how to give us four more years of the same bureaucratic gridlock that has made America great since its founding.

The turning of the tide

Sometimes writing this blog seems like whispering into a windstorm.

There are so many loopy ideas out there that attacking them is like taking on the Hydra -- cut one down, and there are nine more lurching up to take its place.  Now, to be fair, they're not all equally destructive; my attitude is that if you'd like to believe in Bigfoot, or ghosts, or astrology, there's no real harm in it as long as you don't mind people like me laughing in your general direction sometimes.

On the other hand, there are some crackpot ideas that cause direct harm, and to me, this crosses a line.  At that point, I tend to stop poking gentle fun, and start getting hostile.  These include homeopathy, anti-vaxx, and treating mental illness as if it were demonic possession (and, of course, as if demons themselves were real).

But nothing makes my blood boil like attacks on education.  Not only are we talking about my career, here; we're talking about the children.  We're talking about the young people who will grow up to lead our country, our next generation of doctors, nurses, technicians, scientists, scholars, and lawyers.

The whole battle has become increasingly heated lately, to the point that the powers-that-be on the state and federal level are feeling a little... beleaguered.  And they should be.  They have sold out to corporate interests, to the likes of Pearson Education and the Educational Testing Service.  They have ceded our nation's future to a group of men and women who believe that only that which is quantifiable is real, who value test scores above creativity and depth of understanding, and who believe that it is fair to hook the evaluation of educators to these same meaningless streams of numbers.

But the chickens are coming home to roost.  Parents are, in increasing numbers, opting their children out of high-stakes standardized tests.  No, I'm sorry, my child won't be in school today.  He's sick.  Oh, he has a standardized test today, and it'll have to be rescheduled for three weeks from Tuesday?

I'm sorry, he's going to be sick that day, too.

Teachers, too, are fighting back, where they can.  Unfortunately, school districts' hands are often tied by capricious laws that link funding to cooperation with poorly-thought-out state mandates.  But our voices are getting louder.  Just last week, a New Jersey teacher named Melissa Tomlinson confronted New Jersey governor Chris Christie at a rally, asking him, "Why do you portray our schools as failure factories?"

He shouted at her, "Because they are!"

Tomlinson, undaunted, threw back at him his record of defunding public education, a record that included cuts of over one billion dollars in his first year in office.  At this point, Christie lost it completely, screaming at her, "I am tired of you people!  What do you want?  Just do your job!"

Another teacher, Mark Naison, had the following to say about the encounter:

What do I want? What do 'we people' want? We want to be allowed to teach. Do you know that the past two months has been spent of our time preparing and completing paperwork for the Student Growth Objectives? Assessments were created and administered to our students on material that we have not even taught yet. Can you imagine how that made us feel? The students felt like they were worthless for not having any clue how to complete the assessments. The teachers felt like horrible monsters for having to make the students endure this. How is that helping the development of a child? How will that help them see the value in their own self-worth. This futile exercise took time away from planning and preparing meaningful lessons as well as the time spent in class actually completing the assessments. The evaluations have no statistical worth and has even been recognized as such by the NJ Department of Education.

Christie's not the only one who's under siege for his support of destructive educational policy.  Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin has come under criticism from several fronts over her support of a teacher assessment model that gives each school a grade of A through F based solely upon students' performance on standardized tests.  Schools scoring in the D to F range can be closed, the entire teaching staff fired (with a maximum 50% rehire rate), and then reopened -- under state control.

This, despite a joint study by the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University found that what schools are doing is only responsible for 20-30% of student achievement -- the remainder being accounted for by factors outside of school control, such as socioeconomic status and parental support.  A spokesperson for the governor, Alex Weintz, said that he was "dismayed" to find that teachers' unions were using the report to discredit the A-F evaluation model, and that the governor "does not support" the findings of the report.

"It’s not helpful to anyone’s cause," Weintz said.  "It seems to be some opponents are absolutely bent on undermining the credibility of the entire system.  The fact of the matter is this grading system, regardless of whether or not you believe it should have been put together differently, is the law."

Regardless, apparently, of whether or not the grading system actually reflects anything real.

Then, just two days ago, Dr. Gary Johnson, Director of Special Education Advocacy and Instruction at the Early Life Child Psychology and Education Center in Utah, testified before the Wisconsin State Legislature -- and said that the tests associated with the new Common Core Learning Standards amount to "cognitive child abuse."  The exams, he said, have little in the way of norming or peer review, and no validation studies -- meaning that using the scores to evaluate anything would be questionable, but using them to draw conclusions on the success or failure of schools is downright absurd.  "The US Department of Education's testing policies are like The Wild Wild West," Johnson said.  "They are doing what they want with no accountability, no constraints, and no oversight."

Here in my home state of New York, the backlash against the people who put us in our current predicament has been so strong that there have been demands that Commissioner of Education John King resign -- the latest from the New York State Allies for Public Education.

Troubled times, these.  It's easy to lose hope, and heaven knows my morale lately has been at its lowest since I can remember.  But there are signs that the tide might be turning.  My post last week about the lack of trust in educators got hits from all over New York State, and beyond -- and responses that included support from principals, superintendents, and school board members.  As a result of what I wrote, I've been invited to be part of a regional panel that will look at the teacher evaluation model, and other current issues in education.  All around me, I see people organizing, participating in peaceful resistance, speaking their minds and refusing to be silenced.

And perhaps this will, finally, be enough to turn things around.  Maybe we can break the stranglehold on education wielded by the top-down micromanagers, the b-b stackers in the state and federal departments of education who have never taught a day in their lives, but who think they know best how to educate children and evaluate teachers.  This is not a fight against accountability, as it has been characterized by the besieged politicians who still support the current model, and who are (sadly) still in charge of crafting educational policy; this is a demand for reasonable accountability, for an approach to education that gives every child a chance to excel, for assessments that generate statistics which actually mean something.

So I'm trying to stay optimistic, here, and toward that end I keep telling myself, over and over, that wonderful quote from Mohandas Gandhi:

Reason vs. extremism

Let me say explicitly that I have no quarrel whatsoever with the majority of Christians.

Despite being an out, and rather outspoken, atheist, I am firmly of the opinion that everyone arrives at the truth in his/her own way and time.  My personal lack of belief should never be taken as some kind of tacit statement that I hold your philosophical or religious beliefs -- whatever they are -- in contempt.  Now, I may disagree with you, or think you are mistaken.  But whether we agree or not, you have every right to find your own path -- just as I do.

That said, I must ask a question of any Christian readers of this blog.  Why is it that so many of you refuse to stand up to the minority within your ranks who trumpet hate, intolerance, and fear-mongering?

It's a question I've asked before, and one that could equally well be applied in other realms.  In politics, individuals who break ranks with the party line (as Chris Christie did yesterday) are often briefly lauded as mavericks -- but the backlash they face from the establishment frequently makes their gains amongst free-thinkers a Pyrrhic victory.

Wouldn't it be nice, though, if that weren't true?  Wouldn't it be nice if rank-and-file Christians resoundingly repudiated Donald Wildmon, chairman of the American Family Association, for sending out emails like the one that went out to members yesterday, titled "What will religion look like in 2060?", and which contained the following passages:

What will religion look like in the year 2060?

Conservative Christians will be treated as second class citizens, much like African Americans were prior to civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Family as we know it will be drastically changed with the state taking charge of the children beginning at birth...

Churchbuildings [sic] will be little used, with many sold to secular buyers and the money received going to the government...

Christian broadcasting will be declared illegal based on the separation of church and state. The airwaves belong to the government, therefore they cannot be used for any religious purpose.

We will have, or have had, a Muslim president.

Cities with a name from the Bible such as St. Petersburg, Bethlehem, etc. will be forced to change their name due to separation of church and state.

Or, how about the statement that Mathew Staver, dean of Liberty University's School of Law, made to Moody Radio's Janet Parshall about what would happen if gay marriage was legalized across the United States:

Basically marriage will be completely destroyed, families will be destroyed, children will be hurt by this and freedom of speech and freedom of religion, including in the pulpit itself, will absolutely be bulldozed over.  This would open a floodgate of unimaginable proportions…

This is the thing that revolutions literally are made of.  This would be more devastating to our freedom, to our religious freedom, to the rights of pastors and their duty to be able to speak and to Christians around the country, then anything that the revolutionaries during the American Revolution even dreamed of facing.  This would be the thing that revolutions are made of.  This could split the country right in two.  This could cause another civil war.  I’m not talking about just people protesting in the streets, this could be that level because what would ultimately happen is a direct collision would immediately happen with pastors, with churches, with Christians, with Christian ministries, with other businesses, it would be an avalanche that would go across the country.

Maybe I'm being a Pollyanna, here, but there's part of me that just can't accept that ordinary, regular Christians, the men and women who are the majority of Americans, actually believe that these men are speaking the truth.  Please reassure me; you don't really think that atheists like myself secretly want to tear churches down, that we would love to see the state taking charge of raising children, that we won't be satisfied until St. Paul, Minnesota is renamed "Nogodsville?"  That our disbelief implies that we will discriminate against you for your belief?  That if gays marry, it will have any other effect than... more gays being able to marry?

If I'm right -- that the majority of Christians recognize that what these men are saying is blatant foolishness -- why do so few stand up and say so?  Why does it take behavior as egregious as that of the members of the Westboro Baptist Church to make people willing to break ranks?  You are not betraying the cause by stopping the extremists, the hate-filled, the fear-mongers, from being your spokespeople.  By doing so you are opening a space for dialogue, fostering reconciliation, and recognizing what is nothing more than simple fact -- that despite our philosophical differences, we all have the same basic human needs and desires, and that given a chance, we can coexist happily.

So I will ask once again: have the courage to speak up against these men.  Say, simply, "You don't speak for me."  Be willing to be a voice of reason.  Heaven knows, we need them, on both sides.