Starvation As A Cure for Well, Everything

Life can be tough. Republicans are right about that.

Their solution is always the one that makes people understand that. An excess of assistance for those in difficult times will never, ever be something they support.

That's because their definition of success means that someone has had to get through tough times. If you don't get something accomplished, that means you have to do more--saving, striving, building, effort of some sort, a.k.a. working--to get where you didn't go before.

Which is because of their automatic assumption: You didn't try hard enough. Work harder. Work more. And get less until you do, until you learn.

This solution extends to those outside their realm, or outside the realm they want to admit: Minorities, immigrants, and other countries with people of color ("shithole" or "shithouse" countries, depending on which Republican U.S. Senator was in the room when 45 said it). The bottom line is that the U.S. government isn't a charity house, you know?

Summarized as: You don't throw money at a problem to solve it. "Throwing money" means to increase funding for it once you see that it hasn't worked yet. It can be endless, you see. We might actually owe someone an incredible amount of money if we keep this up. Because, of course, we don't right now.

Right?

So we won't huddle with Honduras, Nicaragua, and/or El Salvador to see if we can help them with economic development which might just create more jobs, infrastructure, and educational opportunities besides kids being bullied and being made to pay tribute to the gangs that threaten every single other elementary and secondary student in those countries, whether directly or indirectly.

These are the same gangs that drive parents to sell out to 'coyotes' and get their kids to the U.S. To them, America is either a promise or a refuge--either one of which looms as salvation. Absolutely nothing about that has changed since 1607.

What are walls to them? Just something to get past. And the migrants keep doing so. National policy won't change individual desperation. It never has.

For evidence, I offer Plymouth Rock. And the Underground Railroad. And the Berlin Wall.

We've managed to get Mexico to increase surveillance of the border with its national guard but that evokes an image of lining soldiers up right next to the border and daring anyone to come by (as if Mexico has enough of them to do so). The other day, 45 said that we would never, ever think of shooting migrants trying to get here, dropping hints that he's considered it. Sure enough, we won't. But he doesn't mind if the Mexican government does it, not one bit--something he has never said but considering his normal mentality, nobody can conclude otherwise. Think he'll accept any of the blame?

So he wants Mexico to try harder, to work harder, without an extra dime from us--in fact, raising tariffs on Mexico if they don't succeed. That's been avoided for now, but so blinded is this buffoon that he'll risk higher prices on both those products and those of the Chinese to get everybody to believe that the U.S. is number one in enough minds so that he can claim it and get re-elected.

If we'd just get tough with these people, they'll back away. For heaven's sake, don't help them. They'll start counting on it.

So, too, it was with Bush-43's woe-begotten education solution, No Child Left Behind. Basing all success of poor-performing schools on standardized test scores, it sought to standardize nearly everything else--curricula, teaching, and learning, making school an assembly line. Failure to achieve the nearly impossible goal of one hundred percent learning efficiency--now, there's a fun basis to operate a school, efficiency; that'll bring the kids running back every morning--would result, first and foremost of all, in less federal funding to improve.

Got a problem? Not ours. Yours. You have to try harder, like 45's saying to Mexico. Obviously, the kids aren't trying hard enough. The teachers aren't trying hard enough either because, you know, they belong to unions which get away with allowing them to skate by and bilk the public for its money. If we just connect salaries to test scores, well, then--that'll drive them to make the kids succeed.

How? I don't know. Just stand over them until they do what you want them to do. Repeat everything over and over again. Don't play games or invent other ways to learn.

You know, the old way. School hasn't changed. All you need is a teacher and a piece of chalk. And, of course, to say the pledge of allegiance every day.

As if nobody had been trying in the first place. Poverty? Uh-uh. Don't come to us with that. Everybody knows that poverty is caused by laziness. If people would just work hard, nobody would be without a decent standard of living. Racism, of course, and prejudice have nothing to do with it. Those are just things to overcome. Life is tough. Get over it.

But by all means, don't increase the funding. Take it away. Starve them.

Just like building walls led people to find ways to get around them, so, too, did teachers find ways to circumvent the effects of standardized testing. Some of them out-and-out cheated to make sure the kids did well and secure the funding, as they did in Atlanta, causing a huge scandal and excessive hand-wringing. How awful, you say, especially when people who are supposed to be the greatest example for kids to follow cut corners and cheat?

Because national policy won't change individual desperation. It never has. But then, I've just said that. Cheating should have been expected.

And how did this "get tough" strategy work? It didn't. And the problem has now been handed back to the states. But the reliance on standardized testing to measure progress continues. Now there isn't just one way to mis-measure what you're trying to do. There are fifty.

Fifty, most of which wouldn't dream of increasing educational funding. Because most of them are controlled by Republicans.

Does this mean that, if Republicans remain in control, you'll get to save nearly every single dime of your hard-earned tax dollars that you possibly can? Well, yes.

In exchange for what--a border problem that's an endless embarrassment? An educational system that's stuck in a 40-year rut? But you have a few dollars more at the end of the year.

Oh, but wait: if you're in the middle class, you've been paying more in federal taxes and getting less back. Haven't you? So those few dollars have disappeared.

You're being starved, too. For whom? For the rich, so they can pay more people better wages, which is what they say.

But they almost never do. And the distance between the rich and the rest of us grows daily.

Yet, America is great again. Compared to what, nobody can quite say.

If you just stand over everyone and keep saying it, though, and make them learn it, they'll do so. They'll chant it. They'll wear the caps. They'll start saying "shoot them," right after they pledge allegiance.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark