"Lets Play War"
Hey Folks,
I’ve seen it so many times – having been a teacher for 31 years.
The schools are all screwed up largely because of politics – the politics of who spends money on whom, who can exploit whom, who can avoid responsibility by blaming schools, and who can curry favor by claiming to “improve” the schools without spending money - or by making a lot of money for people who already have a lot of money but want more. Following directly behind those causes, though, (and related to them) comes the asinine situation Paul Krugman describes below:
Foolish people who might be good at something but don’t have a clue about educating children are in control (Mark Twain said, “God made idiots for practice; then he made school boards). These naïve wielders of power put their trust in superintendents and “curriculum coordinators.” In their ignorance boards rely on the counsel of these people, and support the imposition of their policies upon teachers and other staff.
These superintendents often are former coaches who’ve outlived their sporting days (save for golf) or educators with limited classroom experience who early on sought a bigger financial payoff via administration. The curriculum coordinators are usually former teachers as well, teachers of a specific area (e.g. math, English, 3rd Grade) who were instantaneously elevated - by fiat - to guru status, supposedly capable of “directing” ALL the various aspects of the curriculum and expected to whip the teachers into proper practices.
Neither group holds credentials solid enough to justify the board’s confidence or the imposition of their individually determined policies on the staff. Yet, that is how it goes.
As a result, we have the least informed overseeing the least prepared as they impose their will on those in the best position to do some good. It is no wonder the schools are a mess. School Boards generally don’t know anything; so they rely on the superintendent. Superintendents generally don’t know anything; so they rely on the curriculum coordinator. The coordinators don’t know anything; so they rely on the latest recycled fad coming out of the universities or the latest politically-oriented, grant-powered scheme from the State Department of Education. All this shit runs down hill and lands on teachers and kids.
It never works, but it goes on and on and on. The price of fantasy is the death of reality.
Presently, in a larger context, we have Dubya relying on Dickie and Rummy who, in turn, rely on Neo-Coneheads like William Kristol; all imposing their fantasies on the rest of us - the shit runs down hill on our young American soldiers, old people, sick people, retirees, workers, the poor, and hundreds of thousands of people in other parts of the world.
The price of fantasy is the death of reality and the ruination of real people.
- Uke Man
July 21, 2006
The Price of Fantasy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Today we call them neoconservatives, but when the first George Bush was president, those who believed that America could remake the world to its liking with a series of splendid little wars — people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — were known within the administration as “the crazies.” Grown-ups in both parties rejected their vision as a dangerous fantasy.
But in 2000 the Supreme Court delivered the White House to a man who, although he may be 60, doesn’t act like a grown-up. The second President Bush obviously confuses swagger with strength, and prefers tough talkers like the crazies to people who actually think things through. He got the chance to implement the crazies’ vision after 9/11, which created a climate in which few people in Congress or the news media dared to ask hard questions. And the result is the bloody mess we’re now in.
This isn’t a case of 20-20 hindsight. It was clear from the beginning that the United States didn’t have remotely enough troops to carry out the crazies’ agenda — and Mr. Bush never asked for a bigger army.
As I wrote back in January 2003, this meant that the “Bush doctrine” of preventive war was, in practice, a plan to “talk trash and carry a small stick.” It was obvious even then that the administration was preparing to invade Iraq not because it posed a real threat, but because it looked like a soft target.
The message to North Korea, which really did have an active nuclear program, was clear: “The Bush administration,” I wrote, putting myself in Kim Jong Il’s shoes, “says you’re evil. It won’t offer you aid, even if you cancel your nuclear program, because that would be rewarding evil. It won’t even promise not to attack you, because it believes it has a mission to destroy evil regimes, whether or not they actually pose any threat to the U.S. But for all its belligerence, the Bush administration seems willing to confront only regimes that are militarily weak.” So “the best self-preservation strategy ... is to be dangerous.”
With a few modifications, the same logic applies to Iran. And it’s easier than ever for Iran to be dangerous, now that U.S. forces are bogged down in Iraq.
Would the current crisis on the Israel-Lebanon border have happened even if the Bush administration had actually concentrated on fighting terrorism, rather than using 9/11 as an excuse to pursue the crazies’ agenda? Nobody knows. But it’s clear that the United States would have more options, more ability to influence the situation, if Mr. Bush hadn’t squandered both the nation’s credibility and its military might on his war of choice.
So what happens next?
Few if any of the crazies have the moral courage to admit that they were wrong. Vice President Cheney continues to insist that his two most famous pronouncements about Iraq — his declaration before the invasion that we would be “greeted as liberators” and his assertion a year ago that the insurgency was in its “last throes” — were “basically accurate.”
But if the premise of the Bush doctrine was right, why are things going so badly?
The crazies respond by retreating even further into their fantasies of omnipotence. The only problem, they assert, is a lack of will.
Thus William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, has called for a military strike — an airstrike, since we don’t have any spare ground troops — against Iran.
“Yes, there would be repercussions,” he wrote in his magazine, “and they would be healthy ones.” What would these healthy repercussions be? On Fox News he argued that “the right use of targeted military force” could cause the Iranian people “to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power.” Oh, boy.
Mr. Kristol is, of course, a pundit rather than a policymaker. But there’s every reason to suspect that what Mr. Kristol says in public is what Mr. Cheney says in private.
And what about The Decider himself?
For years the self-proclaimed “war president” basked in the adulation of the crazies. Now they’re accusing him of being a wimp. “We have been too weak,” writes Mr. Kristol, “and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.”
Does Mr. Bush have the maturity to stand up to this kind of pressure? I report, you decide.
I’ve seen it so many times – having been a teacher for 31 years.
The schools are all screwed up largely because of politics – the politics of who spends money on whom, who can exploit whom, who can avoid responsibility by blaming schools, and who can curry favor by claiming to “improve” the schools without spending money - or by making a lot of money for people who already have a lot of money but want more. Following directly behind those causes, though, (and related to them) comes the asinine situation Paul Krugman describes below:
Foolish people who might be good at something but don’t have a clue about educating children are in control (Mark Twain said, “God made idiots for practice; then he made school boards). These naïve wielders of power put their trust in superintendents and “curriculum coordinators.” In their ignorance boards rely on the counsel of these people, and support the imposition of their policies upon teachers and other staff.
These superintendents often are former coaches who’ve outlived their sporting days (save for golf) or educators with limited classroom experience who early on sought a bigger financial payoff via administration. The curriculum coordinators are usually former teachers as well, teachers of a specific area (e.g. math, English, 3rd Grade) who were instantaneously elevated - by fiat - to guru status, supposedly capable of “directing” ALL the various aspects of the curriculum and expected to whip the teachers into proper practices.
Neither group holds credentials solid enough to justify the board’s confidence or the imposition of their individually determined policies on the staff. Yet, that is how it goes.
As a result, we have the least informed overseeing the least prepared as they impose their will on those in the best position to do some good. It is no wonder the schools are a mess. School Boards generally don’t know anything; so they rely on the superintendent. Superintendents generally don’t know anything; so they rely on the curriculum coordinator. The coordinators don’t know anything; so they rely on the latest recycled fad coming out of the universities or the latest politically-oriented, grant-powered scheme from the State Department of Education. All this shit runs down hill and lands on teachers and kids.
It never works, but it goes on and on and on. The price of fantasy is the death of reality.
Presently, in a larger context, we have Dubya relying on Dickie and Rummy who, in turn, rely on Neo-Coneheads like William Kristol; all imposing their fantasies on the rest of us - the shit runs down hill on our young American soldiers, old people, sick people, retirees, workers, the poor, and hundreds of thousands of people in other parts of the world.
The price of fantasy is the death of reality and the ruination of real people.
- Uke Man
July 21, 2006
The Price of Fantasy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Today we call them neoconservatives, but when the first George Bush was president, those who believed that America could remake the world to its liking with a series of splendid little wars — people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — were known within the administration as “the crazies.” Grown-ups in both parties rejected their vision as a dangerous fantasy.
But in 2000 the Supreme Court delivered the White House to a man who, although he may be 60, doesn’t act like a grown-up. The second President Bush obviously confuses swagger with strength, and prefers tough talkers like the crazies to people who actually think things through. He got the chance to implement the crazies’ vision after 9/11, which created a climate in which few people in Congress or the news media dared to ask hard questions. And the result is the bloody mess we’re now in.
This isn’t a case of 20-20 hindsight. It was clear from the beginning that the United States didn’t have remotely enough troops to carry out the crazies’ agenda — and Mr. Bush never asked for a bigger army.
As I wrote back in January 2003, this meant that the “Bush doctrine” of preventive war was, in practice, a plan to “talk trash and carry a small stick.” It was obvious even then that the administration was preparing to invade Iraq not because it posed a real threat, but because it looked like a soft target.
The message to North Korea, which really did have an active nuclear program, was clear: “The Bush administration,” I wrote, putting myself in Kim Jong Il’s shoes, “says you’re evil. It won’t offer you aid, even if you cancel your nuclear program, because that would be rewarding evil. It won’t even promise not to attack you, because it believes it has a mission to destroy evil regimes, whether or not they actually pose any threat to the U.S. But for all its belligerence, the Bush administration seems willing to confront only regimes that are militarily weak.” So “the best self-preservation strategy ... is to be dangerous.”
With a few modifications, the same logic applies to Iran. And it’s easier than ever for Iran to be dangerous, now that U.S. forces are bogged down in Iraq.
Would the current crisis on the Israel-Lebanon border have happened even if the Bush administration had actually concentrated on fighting terrorism, rather than using 9/11 as an excuse to pursue the crazies’ agenda? Nobody knows. But it’s clear that the United States would have more options, more ability to influence the situation, if Mr. Bush hadn’t squandered both the nation’s credibility and its military might on his war of choice.
So what happens next?
Few if any of the crazies have the moral courage to admit that they were wrong. Vice President Cheney continues to insist that his two most famous pronouncements about Iraq — his declaration before the invasion that we would be “greeted as liberators” and his assertion a year ago that the insurgency was in its “last throes” — were “basically accurate.”
But if the premise of the Bush doctrine was right, why are things going so badly?
The crazies respond by retreating even further into their fantasies of omnipotence. The only problem, they assert, is a lack of will.
Thus William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, has called for a military strike — an airstrike, since we don’t have any spare ground troops — against Iran.
“Yes, there would be repercussions,” he wrote in his magazine, “and they would be healthy ones.” What would these healthy repercussions be? On Fox News he argued that “the right use of targeted military force” could cause the Iranian people “to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power.” Oh, boy.
Mr. Kristol is, of course, a pundit rather than a policymaker. But there’s every reason to suspect that what Mr. Kristol says in public is what Mr. Cheney says in private.
And what about The Decider himself?
For years the self-proclaimed “war president” basked in the adulation of the crazies. Now they’re accusing him of being a wimp. “We have been too weak,” writes Mr. Kristol, “and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.”
Does Mr. Bush have the maturity to stand up to this kind of pressure? I report, you decide.
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