Author Archives: Sheila

That GOP War On Education

It isn’t just public education that the GOP disdains–it’s also higher education. 

According to the Republicans attacking institutions of higher education, the fact that educated Americans overwhelmingly vote Blue these days is proof positive that colleges and universities are practicing “indoctrination,” turning conservative teenagers into liberal, “woke” young voters.

I thought about that GOP article of faith when I came across this July article from the New Republic, about the upcoming national convention of college Republicans, which–according to the report– is “excitedly welcoming vicious antisemite and racist Nick Fuentes as a headliner.” These are college students who somehow managed to escape that pervasive indoctrination.

The event is being hosted later this month by College Republicans United, a group that, according to its website, has been committed to “spreading America First across college campuses since January 2018.” Among its “values” are planks like “opposition to immigration and multiculturalism.”

Fuentes–the speaker they were “thrilled” to announce– has previously been banned from social media for his violent rhetoric denouncing people of color, women, Jews, immigrants, LGBTQ people, Covid-19, and much more. He’s  definitely not “woke.”

He has also proudly said he’s “just like Hitler” (whom he has also called “a pedophile … also really fucking cool”), and that “Catholic monarchy, and just war, and crusades, and inquisitions” are much better than democracy.

Fuentes will be joined by Jake Chansley, known as the QAnon Shaman,  who will also speak at the event. And the article notes that the official Republican Parties in three Arizona counties (Pima, Maricopa, and Yavapai) are backing the event.

It occurred to me, reading this, that the majority of college students who identify as progressive may be reacting against those in their midst who subscribe to–and celebrate!–the positions held by Fuentes and Chansley, rather than falling under the influence of their professors.

That said, I think it is fair to say that a sound education introduces students to the reality of ambiguity–to a recognition that the world is not black and white, that the issues they will face are complex and fact-sensitive and that people of good will can come to different conclusions about them. People who understand that complexity are far less likely to cling to the perceived verities of an ideology or the comforts offered by tribalism than people who are terrified by shades of gray. 

Ironically, what Republicans really hate about higher education is the lack of indoctrination–the widening of perspectives and the less rigid understandings that flow from a broadened world-view.

Meanwhile, however, the GOP’s war on education continues to inflict casualties: in Florida, it has led to a significant brain drain.

With the start of the 2023-24 academic year only six weeks away, senior officials at New College of Florida (NCF) made a startling announcement in mid-July: 36 of the small honors college’s approximately 100 full-time teaching positions were vacant. The provost, Bradley Thiessen, described the number of faculty openings as “ridiculously high”, and the disclosure was the latest evidence of a brain drain afflicting colleges and universities throughout the Sunshine state.

Andrew Gothard is the state-level president of the United Faculty of Florida ; he predicts a loss of between 20 and 30% of faculty members at some universities during the upcoming academic year. That would be a “marked increase in annual turnover rates that traditionally have stood at 10% or less.”

Data shows more people continue to move into Florida than are leaving, but those raw numbers don’t reflect the ages, identities or skills of those coming in and going out. It isn’t just faculty. News outlets report that immigrant laborers have left in droves, in response to DeSantis’ anti-immigrant laws, creating problems for owners of bars, restaurants and orange orchards, among others.

A recent article focusing upon the five worst states to work & live in began by noting that there are nearly twice as many job openings nationwide as there are workers available to fill them, making states with few educated workers unattractive to potential employers. It had this to say about Florida: “Rated strictly on Life, Health and Inclusion, the Sunshine State can be a dreary place.” In 2023, it gave the state a Life, Health & Inclusion Score of 129 out of 350 points–a grade of  D.

(Not that Indiana has any bragging rights: we scored 113 out of 350 points, for a grade of D-. Our universities are still functioning properly, but the students they educate mostly go elsewhere. According to a study by Ball State, the state’s disdain for education at all levels has made Indiana “ill-equipped to keep up” thanks to a less educated workforce.)

Remember that old bumper sticker about the expense of education? (“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”)  The GOP version should read: “Education endangers  Republicans. Support ignorance.”

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Calling Out The Urban Myth

One of the sites I regularly visit is Juanita Jean’s–The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon. The proprietor of that establishment–a Texan who posts as “Miss Juanita Jean herownself-“-reminds me a lot of the late, great Molly Ivins. Over the past couple of years, she has shared posting tasks with several others, and while most lack her wit–and brevity– the site remains a good source of Texas criticism and occasional snark.

A recent post considered the uproar over Jason Aldean’s song “Try that in a Small Town.” 

I’m not a fan of country music– or for that matter, the contemporary music scene of any genre (actually, nothing much since Dean Martin and/or the Limelighters…) –but I’ve certainly seen reports about the song and the reactions to it. The racism was evidently barely veiled, leading to the deletion of some Black Lives Matter video, but the linked post by Nick Carraway focused on the song’s even more damaging stereotype: the belief that “small town” people are somehow different–and nicer–than the evil “others” who populate the country’s urban hell-holes.

As Carraway writes:

In looking at the lyrics for Jason Aldean’s song “Try that in a Small Town” you can see the subtle nods towards racism. When looking at the video you can’t avoid the subtle nods for racism. Left vs. Right is the main fault line everyone focuses on, but big town vs. small town is another fault line. There are others. Honest vs. Dishonest. Asshole vs, Kind. Narcissist vs. Empathetic. America has always been a collection fault lines and separations. Essentially we have made it through by standing with people we have common cause with even if we have other areas where we disagree. As much as the overt racism and sexism bothers me, there was something else I noticed immediately.

“Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like.”
I hate to be the “nobody is talking about” guy, but there is an image inherent here about big city life. I’m sure this is what people in small towns believe. It’s only been shoved down their throats for decades. Hell, the 2017 inaugural address was titled “American Carnage”. It was offensive on any number of levels, but more offensive to me as a writer. It was like a sixth grade thought experiment where the winner got his/her dystopian essay read on national television.

The biggest fault line dividing America today is fact vs. fiction. Aldean is telling a terrific story here. You could probably picture Gotham from all of those Batman movies where everyone was afraid to go outside and crime was just around the corner. SNL had a sketch years ago where they talked about someone in New York getting mugged every thirty seconds. So, they just made it the same guy. Chicago, Portland, New York, and Los Angeles are all billed as hell on earth. Yet, crime statistics per capita would tell you that they are statistically more safe than traditional red areas.

As Carraway says, this mythology has morphed from “left versus right” to fiction versus nonfiction. Songs like this one paint a picture of “big city” life that is–as he correctly notes –about as true as a dystopian novel.

Several commenters to the post offered confirming examples drawn from the small towns they’d grown up in; others offered statistical confirmation of Carraway’s point. As he wrote in response to those comments:

It’s the politics of exaggeration. Do carjackings happen? Sure, of course they do. Do they happen at red lights? I suppose there’s a non-zero chance of that happening. Of course people rob liquor stores. I’ve never heard of anyone being sucker punched on the street but I suppose anything can happen….

I suppose the hysteria over “Democrat run cities” and “groomers” makes perfect sense in that bubble. If the gay/lesbian/bi/trans population were really 20 percent as they believe, then something nefarious is happening. Except it’s not happening at that rate. None of it is.

(Actually, I wouldn’t consider 20% of the population being gay as nefarious. I’d welcome it. What is genuinely “nefarious” is the 20% or 30% who are MAGA….)

I call these fantasies about urban life “alternate realities.” Carraway calls them fiction. Both terms apply far more accurately to the lunatic caucus in Congress, where the GOP is currently “investigating” alien life and looking for little green men…which raises a question:

Since people like Aldean are so frightened of those urban Black folks, I wonder how they’d react to Green ones…

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And Close To Home…

A reader recently sent me a story from the Brownsburg Sentinel that illustrates the importance of local media–and at the same time, suggests its limitations in an age where so many of us have lost the very concept of  community and citizenship . Evidently, Americans are fixated on national news and/or America’s vicious culture wars, or–in the alternative–are unconcerned about their local governments, or are amusing themselves on social media…

The Sentinel covered two consecutive meetings of the Brownsburg Town Council, the second of which included the Council’s dissolution of the Brownsburg Park Board–a board that had served the residents of Brownsburg since 1959.

Prior to the first of those two meetings, the Council had published an agenda including the dissolution item; the day before the meeting, it eliminated that item from the agenda.

Town Council President Travis Tschaenn also refused questions from a resident on the ownership and modification of the council agenda. He had the resident escorted away from lectern and temporarily removed from the venue by a Brownsburg Police officer.

According to the Sentinel, the Parks board was informed of the impending dissolution late on the Friday prior to the Council meeting. The Sentinel also reported that approximately $368,000 in grant funding, intended for the construction of a local Park, would be jeopardized should the park board be dissolved.

The newspaper also reported on a lack of any evidence that Travis Tschaenn or anyone on the Council had conducted an investigation into the short and long term financial impact of such a dissolution, and that Tschaenn has refused to respond to multiple inquires  or to otherwise explain his conduct in this matter.

In the second of the two Council meetings, with virtually no discussion or fanfare, the Brownsburg Parks Board was dissolved.

Because the story at the link was formatted differently than most online newspapers (it included a number of videos posted to You Tube), I was curious to learn more about the Sentinel. An email exchange with the editor/publisher led to a lunch and fascinating conversation.

It turns out that the Sentinel began publication a couple of years after another local newspaper was discontinued (the publisher of that weekly newspaper died.) It is essentially the “hobby” of its current editor/publisher, David Weyant, and reaches several thousand of the some 50,000 residents in and around Brownsburg.

Weyant said he could only speculate about the motivation for eliminating the local Parks Board.  (The “official” reason–too much unnecessary bureaucracy–didn’t pass the smell test.) An Indianapolis development company is said to have its eye on a well-located parcel currently being used as a park…but there is no confirmatory evidence of that theory.

What isn’t speculative was the lack of public participation in the process, despite the coverage provided by the Sentinel.

Weyant told me that some ten years ago, during a fight over proposed annexation, hundreds of local residents had appeared and participated at public hearings. By the time the Council turned its attention to the Parks Board, most members of the community had stopped showing interest in the only ways that matter–appearing and speaking at public meetings and/or communicating directly with the officials entitled to vote on an issue.

Only three members of the public appeared at the Council meeting at which the Parks Board was dissolved.

Weyant shook his head, opining that local residents seemed to think they were exercising their civic responsibilities by venting on social media. Ten years ago,  he noted, social media was barely a thing–just beginning to emerge.

Needless to say, a diatribe delivered on Facebook or WhatsApp is equivalent to spitting in the wind; it certainly doesn’t constitute civic engagement and absent an avalanche of anger  that prompts actual engagement, it is extremely unlikely to change the minds or behaviors of public officials.

I would have expected more government/citizen interaction in a small community where people know each other and are likely to know their elected officials personally, especially because the community does have a local newspaper, however limited its reach.

Obviously, I was wrong–the information conveyed by a local newspaper is necessary, but evidently not sufficient.

It will be interesting–and probably depressing–to see what the Brownsburg City Council does with the land and funding sources it now directly controls without the “hassle” of an intervening source of checks and balances.

If it turns out that local folks don’t like those subsequent actions, maybe they can blame their diminishing exercise of democratic civic engagement on social media.

Bread and circuses…..

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Okay–Let’s Talk About Free Speech

I haven’t posted about the indictment filed against Donald Trump by Jack Smith, because everyone  else in the universe is contributing to that discussion. But one element of those analyses/debates sets my hair on fire.

Nothing about this prosecution is about Free Speech. Nothing!

I taught my classes in Law and Public Policy through a constitutional lens. I spent the first part of the semester on what I call the “constitutional architecture”–very much including the Bill of Rights. (I was always shocked by the number of students who came to class totally unaware that the First Amendment protects citizens against government censorship–not from other people’s negative responses.)

When we came to freedom of speech, I wanted students to understand the difference between speech–defined as the constitutionally-protected communication of an idea, no matter how wrong or stupid or hurtful–and action, including action effectuated through speech.

Some of the examples I used:

  • I tell you I’ll make you a great deal on a diamond ring. It turns out to be a cubic zirconium. My representations that it was a diamond aren’t protected “speech,” they are fraud–a criminal action.
  • I call you every 15 minutes and scream at you over the phone. You call the police. I protest that I am engaging in freedom of speech. I’m wrong–harassment is an action, and the government has a right to proscribe it.
  • I’m a police officer, and I’m sitting in a restaurant booth. I hear the people in the next booth planning to rob the local bank. One says, “okay, I have the car. You have the gun. I’ve cased the place, and if you are there promptly at two, when the security officers shift, you should be able to get in and out by ten after, and I’ll be waiting.” A conversation of this specificity (unless they are actors rehearsing a scene!) constitutes the initial steps–actions–of the commission of a crime. I need not wait until they are in the middle of that bank robbery–I’m entitled to arrest them now.
  • You are a MAGA fanatic, and you regularly post diatribes to social media about how horrible Joe Biden is, how government and the “deep state” cannot be trusted and how you regularly pray for the painful death of all Democrats. Aside from your social media screeds, you take no action to harm anyone. That’s free speech, and you’re home free–at least, when it comes to the criminal law. (If you accuse specific political foes of being pedophiles or Satanists or whatever, you will risk a civil suit for libel or defamation, but absent credible threats and/or concrete actions to harm someone, you will not face criminal prosecution.)

Bribery, Insider trading. Identity theft and selling state secrets to foreign governments are other examples of crimes committed via speech.

One of the reasons people get confused about what free speech is and what it isn’t is the fact that “speech”–that is, transmission of a message– can be accomplished without words. (The legalese is “symbolic speech.”)

Burning a flag (assuming you own that flag and you aren’t violating a dry weather “no burning” ordinance) is protected by the First Amendment, because the whole purpose of that act is to send a message that the burner disapproves of the country. It’s a message that angers a lot of people, but that doesn’t justify government punishing it.

Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois or Charlottesville, Virginia are sending an equally clear message, even without the latter’s accompanying chants. We all know what that message is, and–again, absent violence, vandalism or other hooliganism–it’s protected by the First Amendment.

The text of the Trump Indictment acknowledged that his lies were protected speech. Whether he believed them or not is irrelevant–so long as he was only posting his crazed diatribes and screaming about the election being rigged, the First Amendment protected him. Once he took concrete actions to overturn the results of the election and remain in power, however, the Free Speech clause no longer applied.

I’ve read several columns by people who should know better, gravely opining that prosecutors will have to establish whether Trump actually believed the garbage he was spewing, and noting that making such a showing is difficult. Those writers need to re-take  high school civics. As a better-educated pundit noted, I may be genuinely convinced that I am entitled to your car, but stealing it is still a crime.

Trump’s MAGA defenders can scream about the Department of Justice “criminalizing” Free Speech,  but those protestations will only sound plausible to people who slept through their high school government class.

This whole debate proves my point about the deplorable level of Americans’ civic literacy.

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Idiocy And Its Consequences

Most of us know people who ignore what is happening in Washington, D.C., or in their own state’s capitols. During my teaching years, I had several students who simply failed to connect the activities of policymakers to their own lives–governance seemed remote, almost irrelevant, especially when they were overwhelmed with efforts to balance school, jobs and families.

The extent of that civic apathy, alongside the ongoing culture war, goes a long way toward explaining why we have a Congress filled with clowns, self-important ignoramuses and assorted lunatics intent upon preventing, rather than producing, governance and policy.

Government gridlock matters, whether the apathetic crowd understands that or not. The most recent evidence is the downgrading of long-term American debt by Fitch Ratings, one of the three major independent credit rating agencies. Fitch downgraded the nation’s long-term debt from AAA, the highest tier, to AA+ — only the second time in U.S. history that the country’s debt has been downgraded. The first followed a cut by S&P Global Ratings in 2011, prompted by a fight between House Republicans and President Obama over raising the federal borrowing limit. Fitch cited a similar standoff this spring, when House Republicans again refused to raise the debt ceiling for several months.

The agency explained that “The repeated debt limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management.” Although it also listed America’s growing debt burden, the agency made it clear that the fact of the debt wasn’t the issue: it was the “erosion of governance” that had created doubts about the nation’s ability to cope with that debt. Fitch highlighted the GOP’s tax cuts, at a time when fiscal prudence called for increasing, rather than decreasing, tax receipts.

 In their announcement of the downgrade, Fitch analysts cited  “erosion of governance” compared to peers that “over the last two decades that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions.”

In other words, as The New York Times observed, the downgrade was yet another sign that those knowledgable about the economy are increasingly worried about the effects of America’s political chaos–and especially about the recurring brinkmanship over the debt limit that is becoming entrenched in Washington–despite the fact that the U.S. economy is currently robust.

The immediate consequence of the Fitch downgrade was a sell-off on Wall Street, where retirement funds and stocks held by many of those apathetic citizens took a bath. And as ABC News reported, when government struggles to address debt issues, triggering such a downgrade, consumers face higher interest rates for loans–  higher costs for borrowing for everything from credit cards to mortgages to cars.

So here we are.

I have drawn two broad conclusions from the country’s current failures of self-government: one, the apathetic Americans who have failed to “connect the dots” between government dysfunction and their own daily lives have facilitated the election of people who are demonstrably  incapable of understanding the policy process. They have done so either by voting mechanically on the basis of partisan identification, or (frequently) by failing to vote at all. Two, far too many Americans cast their votes on the basis of cultural grievances, ignoring–or failing to understand–the actual responsibilities of the political offices to which they have elevated their chosen culture warriors.

For years, Democrats have complained about voters who–as they see it–fail to vote their own interests. What they mean by that is that such voters discount the pocketbook benefits they would receive from the enactment of Democratic policies. What that complaint ignores is the reality that, for most people, “interests” are not necessarily–or even predominantly–financial. The voters who return the Paul Gosars, Jim Jordans, Margery Taylor Green and their ilk to Congress are fighting social change and the perceived diminution of their privileged status as White Christians, males, heterosexuals, etc.

The problem for the rest of us–genuine Conservatives and moderates as well as progressive Democrats–is that this cohort has zero interest in governance and no ability to function as policymakers. Their sole interest is performative. They appear to be totally unaware of the consequences of those performances–one of which, as we’ve just seen, is to convince rating agencies that the United States government is incapable of dealing with the legitimate issues it faces. 

We can only hope that culture warriors and apathetic Americans–aided and abetted by extreme gerrymandering–don’t vote in 2024 to return the clowns to what has become a dysfunctional Congressional circus.

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