How does lowering the minimum wage in Greece do anything to improve the economy of the nation? Does lowering the income of those barely making it in any way contribute to stimulating the economy, or is it merely to increase profits of those already benefiting from wages that are insufficient?
Why is the Obama administration taking $6 million dollars from the funding of NAEP - the National Assessment of Education Progress, aka the nation's report card on education - and devoting it instead to creating yet another international comparison?
Why do we insist on "looking forward" and not holding to accountability CIA agents, military planners, elected and appointed officials who lied us into a war that cost trillions, committed war crimes, and worse, yet we are willing to destroy the lives of teachers and principals who are trying to help our children because their scores on poorly designed tests being used for purposes for which they were never intended are not high enough?
How if we think people gamed the financial system or worse, do we not insist on full accountability and restitution to make whole those whose lives and dreams were restored? Oh, and while we are at it, why do we wait until after the statute of limitations is passed to even begin to explore some of the financial crimes? Are both of our political parties so indebted to big money that no one holds the super rich accountable?
Why do we continue to lie to the American people, and especially our young people, with the untruth of American Exceptionalism, when the only things exceptional about this nation are
- the world's highest incarceration rate
- the only industrial democracy that does not provide complete health care to all of its people
- our economic inequality continues to increase while in other nations it is decreasing
- our history includes more broken treaties than any other 5 nations combined: remember, we signed treaties with what we called the Indian Nations
And as I acknowledge that I cannot come up with justifiable answers to these or to the many other questions I can pose, I have to ask myself these:
Why do I continue to try to teach about a government that is decreasingly as described in our founding documents?
Why do I continue to participate in a political process as if we were a liberal democracy when increasingly all that matters is who has the money to spend and how one can pervert both who can vote and how the votes are counted - if they are counted?
Of what value are these, or any other words I might choose to post?
As Rachel Maddow would say, talk me down.