Some days my mind manages to stay focused, but then other days it just bounces all over the place.  Yesterday was one such day, and I found myself musing ‘n pondering on a number of topics, so let me just throw a few of them out there for your perusal.

Education …

There is so much to learn that no human being could possibly learn it all in one lifetime.  Children only go to school for approximately nine months out of the year, so that leaves the responsibility of teaching them on the shoulders of parents for three months out of every year.  But most parents either send them out to play when the weather is nice or plunk them down in front of the television (affectionately and appropriately nicknamed the ‘boob tube’) on cold or rainy days.  So that means our children must rely on public schools for their access to knowledge … knowledge that will help them grow into functional adults who contribute to society.

But wait!  Today, public schools in many states are being denied the right to teach children well by the states!  Books from which they learn so many things are being banned by state governments!  Teachers are being forbidden to discuss so many things it makes my head spin!  By cherry-picking the parts of history, the state authorities want them to learn and leaving out the rest, we are teaching them lies, teaching them fairy tales.  They are given to believe that this nation has always been one of goodwill, that the ‘generous’ plantation owners in the south helped Black people when they first arrived on the continent by giving them jobs, food, and shelter.  And later, those generous white people even gave Black people their very own drinking fountains and schools!  How … utterly … ludicrous.

Education should be the great equalizer, giving poor children and rich the equal opportunities to succeed as adults, but it is doing the exact opposite.  Children in progressive states where children are taught the good, the bad, and the ugly have a much better chance of success in the world than those in Florida who grow up not even realizing that they are not ‘bad’ for the feelings they may have.  In other states, they are lied to and grow up believing that the KKK was a charitable organization or that the South actually won the Civil War, but generously conceded in order to restore peace throughout the nation.

Job qualifications …

A few days ago I wrote about the large number of very unqualified people running for office this year on the Republican ticket.  People such as Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, J.D. Vance, Marge Greene and many more have virtually zero qualifications for a seat in Congress, and yet … their names will be on the ballot in November.  Fellow-blogging buddy Professor Taboo posted a comment to that post with a few pertinent examples that stuck in my mind …

• If you were to take a transcontinental flight around the world in an Airbus A380 or a Boeing 747-8, would you do it with a school bus driver and school-crossing officers as your pilots and flight-crew?
• If you were being deployed into real-life combat in the middle of a warzone, and your commander handed you a slingshot as your weapon and his/her only experience in military leadership, tactics, & weaponry was 2-hours playing WW1 video-wargame “Isonzo,” how would you like your chances of survival? Or…
• If you needed your new, sophisticated natural gas-lines installed in your large, gourmet, $300k home kitchen, would you call a taxi-driver to do it?

And if you need somebody to make laws that govern some 330 million people from all walks of life and across the entire economic spectrum, would you hire a football player, a gym trainer, a snake-oil salesman, or a fiction writer?  Thanks, Prof, for these great analogies!

Law & Order?

If the Republicans are the party of ‘law and order’ and if they are so concerned about ‘rising crime’, then why do they keep putting more and more guns into the hands of civilians where they can easily be used to commit … crimes?  (In case you’re a Republican, such things as murder are crimes.)  Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas in May … what’s the Republican response?  “Oh, let’s put guns in teacher’s hands!  More guns will make our children safer!”  I’m sorry … I fail to see the logic here.

In a nation of 330 million people, there are over 400 million guns in the hands of civilians.  What is even more astounding is that only about 40% of U.S. households have one or more guns, so on average, each gun-owning household has not one, not two, but three guns. As we already know, some households have an arsenal while others have only a single gun, but to me these numbers are scary.

The majority of people in the U.S. support gun regulations!  63% overall support reimplementing a ban on assault weapons!  So, why don’t the politicians even allow the topic to come up for discussion?  Oh yeah … they are beholden to the gun industry … they are bought and paid for – lock, stock, and barrel.  This chart from a PEW Research poll last year shows the will of the people …

But sadly, the will of the people is irrelevant to politicians who have sold their soul downriver.  The Republican Party can no longer claim to be the party of “law and order” or to be “fighting crime”, for they are increasing the odds that each of us will be affected by gun violence at least once in our lives.