I was a registered Republican for years. When they had no candidates who could beat Donald Trump who I respected up until the time that he became a politician, I changed parties…at the primary…no less. Somehow, even though I had voted in all of the elections up to this point including primaries, I was suddenly not registered with either party and I had to declare. I declared and voted for Bernie.
I did not really think that Bernie had all of the answers. He wasn’t Trump and he wasn’t Hillary. To be honest, I bought into a lot of the negative hype about Hillary. Too bad. It shows that this negative crap really does work and that the more poop you pile on, the more people believe the pooper. So now we have a pooper in office. Do you like the smell? I don’t.
I believe that what truly made this country great was its pioneering spirit. We seem to have lost that spirit. Pioneers sought out new spaces that were undisturbed, untamed, and unproven and then went on to create meaningful lives. It still lives in all of us. It has just been crushed out of sight, but it is still there. We need to draw it out and the only way to do that is to say “no” to the establishment. I don’t mean politically, although some of the false ideas and doctrines are perpetuated by politicians that are beholden to organizations that are funding their campaigns. I mean societal norms.
Let’s take school. School is where we should go to learn how to be part of our contemporary society. Our contemporary society has changed so drastically in the past few years that organized education is almost entirely irrelevant. Instead of looking at the skills that the average Joe or Jane needs to have to survive in our society and then adapt school to that need, we race even faster in a direction that is destroying the average family. More of what we don’t need is not the prescription for a bright future but economic disaster. Who is driving our schools? Colleges! It is because college is big business and needs to justify itself. If it were truly worthwhile, then we wouldn’t need graduate degrees just to get a job.
Businesses use a cost/benefit analysis before moving forward in a particular direction. What they are evaluating is a plan. If the individual, the high school student, has no real plan for when they are finished college, then they shouldn’t go. Even if they do have a plan, they must apply the cost benefit analysis to their own lives. The answer may still be no to college but at least they understand why. We need to become responsible for our own future. We need to really “mind our own business” and our life is our business. It is impractical for the average 18 year old to have the maturity to make these decisions when they don’t understand the world that we live in. Racking up over $100,000.00 in debt just to find themselves is a bad plan. It isn’t their plan.
When loans get defaulted on, it is unfair to the lenders. The lenders are relying on the law to get their money and they will. That is a whole other blog post, but for now, let’s just say that this “lack of leadership” from the top has got to stop. Somebody has to step up to the plate for America. Who is with me?