ParisTampaBlog

It’s built into our natures, into our biology, that we’re going to die, and with only enough exceptions to prove the rule, the rule that we won’t live more than a single century. One can argue without end about the meaning, the justice of this, but it’s the way things are.

Is it a good thing, or a bad thing? Well when one observes the very old, especially those whom we’ve confined to an asylum or home for the aged, one sees few, if any, for whom death will not be when it does come a blessing. So given what our bodies, if not in all cases our minds, have been reduced to, death is an excellent thing.

We accept this, we accept the biological, the animal rhythm of our lives, because we have to. We have no choice.

But when it comes to our creations, and especially our institutions, things are different. We seem to want to make sure that when they also have outlived their original purposes and usefulness that they, unlike us, not be allowed to die and disappear.

Why is this so? Why do we keep so many of our institutions on life support indefinitely? Is it because unlike our own mortality which is without our power to alter, the life of our institutions is within our power to preserve. And preservers we want to be?

For example, we ourselves may be long gone but the weekly Rotary Club gatherings where we used to sit about the lunch table with our fellows will still take place —perhaps like the activities of a church — thereby giving a kind of immortality to those of us who were once members?

A harmless example this one. But what about another of our creations, the public schools? They are close to completing their second century of existence and while clearly no longer, if they ever were, accomplishing their original purposes, still receive generous life support in the form of cash infusions from local, state, and national governments.

I got to thinking about this while reading a Bloomberg Business Week article, U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse. The closest the article came to speaking of the death of the Post Office was in the several references to an impending “implosion.”

“I really believe that the USPS is going to get to a point where, regardless of what it does… it is going to implode.” This comment from R. Richard Geddes, an associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University.

Most of the article was about what might be done to save the service, or that which would have to be done in order to somehow enable a good number of the 31,871 post offices to stay open as well as a good number of the 571,566 full-time employees to go on working. Few in key positions seem ready to admit that our postal service has simply outlived its usefulness.

For most of us the U.S. Postal Service is primarily serving the business community. Junk mail, not first class stuff, not the letters that people used to write to one another, is what we mostly find in our mail boxes.

I have the same question as James I. Campbell Jr., a consultant in Potomac, Md., who advises foreign governments on postal policy issues.

Campbell notes, as we all do, that the postal service is now carrying more junk than first class mail, and that it might be best described as a government-run advertising mail delivery service. Campbell asks, “Does that make any sense?” And he answers, and I with him, “It doesn’t.”

What is it that most politicians talk about, first during the campaign, and then from their newly elected positions in the government? Isn’t it how they would and will do things differently from the previous administration?

But is that what actually happens, say during a new president’s term of office? During George W’s two terms only one serious reform was even attempted, the No Child Left Behind Act signed into Law on January 8, 2002. On whether this reform has done what it set out to do, improved public schooling for our most disadvantaged children, the jury is still out.

What mostly marks Bush’s eight year tenure as president are his responses to what happened to us, to the country during his time in office, responses to things over which we had no control, to start with anyway.

And in fact Bush’s presidency will probably be judged by his responses to just two events —the destruction of the twin towers by terrorists and the devastation of New Orleans by the hurricane, Katrina. It won’t be judged by the rare and mostly failed reform initiative or two undertaken during his administration.

For in fact no less than individuals, even more so perhaps, are countries subject to, the prey of, mostly unforeseen events. And of course about this sort of thing, tsunamis, hurricanes, revolts, uprisings of the populace etc. we don’t, and can’t, and won’t hear much during the campaign.

The effectiveness of a president and his administration, no less than that of an individual, will be known by his responses to what is mostly happening to him while in office. Certainly not by which he imagines he may be making to happen.

Quick, name me one good thing that George Bush made happen during eight years in office? President Obama can now at least name one.

Bush did begin the war in Iraq. He made it happen, but does anyone now believe that it was a good thing? In any case it was certainly not, even at the beginning, what Bush himself imagined it would be.

But this is not to say that the world is without progress, that things don’t get better, and that we don’t help, just that most of that progress is not of our own making. Rather progress, like so many other things, seems to happen to us.

In any case things do not usually improve by the actions of our leaders. Things do not usually change because of what they do, or try to do. Just two examples,— the public schools and the Arab Israeli conflict ought to persuade you of this. How many have tried and failed over now nearly two generations to change either one for the better?

Even the universally admired and long delayed march for the long absent civil rights of the blacks happened to us more than we made it happen. And President Johnson made a good name for himself by joining the march rather than opposing it. And most presidents since then have followed in his stead. They had to.

By his responses to 9/11 Bush made things much worse. Perhaps because he had no example to follow. In any case because of what must be called ill-considered actions on his part we are now heavily invested with lives and treasure in two wars, and have little hope that when the wars end we will have accomplished anything beneficial to ourselves or to the peoples there on the ground and most directly concerned.

All that didn’t have to be.

What’s clear now, well after the fact, is that we should have been somehow with or behind that which was about to happen in the Middle East, the genuine popular and democratic movements among the peoples of the region that we are now witnessing. We ought to have seen this coming and acted accordingly, just as we ought to have seen some 20 years before, and then favorably influenced, the breakup of the Soviet Union.

If we had done so we might now have a different and more enlightened Russian nation, perhaps even a member of our family of nations instead of the closed autocracy it now is under Putin.

We ought to have somehow got behind the peoples of the Middle East and supported their own as it turned out readiness to remove their oppressors (who were too often our partners) and realize for the first time their own and rightful freedoms.  We ought to have done this instead of going after Saddam and Bin Laden with a singleness of purpose and the full power of our armed forces, the kind of action or reaction that was just right on December 8th, 1941 but entirely inappropriate today.

As I think about the reforms and changes that I have witnessed in my own lifetime, and in particular about those that have added to men’s freedom, or, what is the same thing, those that have helped more and more of the world’s peoples to realize their full potential, I look mostly in vain for those reforms and changes that have come about through the initiatives of men and nations.

Even the civil rights movements, the rights of women, or minorities of all kinds, those events which make up so much of modern history, probably had less to do with individuals, even when these individuals were Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and such others, than with whole masses of peoples who were now ready to participate in their own enfranchisement.

And in fact how many individuals, no less truly great than the three I mention, have remained completely unknown to the world because they were simply ahead of their time? In other words, because the world was not ready for them, as England, say, was ready for Gandhi, the United States for King, and yes, South Africa, for Nelson Mandela.

The big question on my mind right now is whether President Obama will see what’s really happening to the country, and when it’s good, such as school choice and growing the private economy, and go along with it and support it, and when it’s bad, the growing numbers of unemployed, young, poor, and minority males, and the millions of “illegals” who are asked to work and pay taxes and not given legality, and take steps to oppose it.

There are any number of things happening to the country right now, most of which we’re not even aware of, but some of which we are and which we should address, such as the two just mentioned. Instead our politicians are either blind, ignorant, or simply pretending that these things don’t exist.

Probably at the present time the large numbers our young men unable to find a job paying a living wage, and the out of control run-up in our national debt, from some $5 trillion in January of 2001 when George W took office to some $14 trillion today, may very well be the two greatest problems we face, and are mostly unaddressed by our elected representatives.

What happened to our country during the eight years of George W’s presidency and is still happening is not too different from what happened in New Orleans during Katrina. Except now, nearly six years after the winds and rains of August, 2005, New Orleans is no longer under water, while the country, now under President Obama, still is, still is awash in debt, and still with no dry land in sight.

Furthermore instead of stemming the sources of that debt, —too many wars, too many aircraft carriers, too many subsidies and entitlements going to those who don’t need them, resulting in there being not enough for those who are really in need— we continue to add to it.

I don’t often agree with Paul Krugman. In my opinion he’s too much on the side of government solutions to all things.

I don’t think I’ve ever read him saying that we should tax less. Nor have I read in his columns words describing just how we might best grow the country’s wealth. Because GDP growth, rather than higher taxes is by far still the most efficient and most effective way to increase the government’s tax revenues.

Yet today in an op ed piece, Seniors, Guns and Money, I find myself agreeing, helas!, with what he says. In response to a question from Stanford economist John Taylor Krugman does make the best argument I’ve seen yet for higher taxes.

Here is Taylor’s question: “If government agencies and programs functioned with 19% to 20% of G.D.P. in 2007 why is it so hard for them to function with that percentage in 2021?”

And here is the essence of Krugman’s response, almost of Tweet length: “For here’s the quick-and-dirty summary of what the federal government does: It’s a giant insurance company, mainly serving older people, that also has an army.”

Wow, a pretty good description of our government. What exactly does Krugman mean? Well here in his own words is the explanation:

“The great bulk of federal spending that isn’t either defense-related or interest on the debt goes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The first two programs specifically serve seniors. And while Medicaid is often thought of as a poverty program, these days it’s largely about providing nursing care, with about two-thirds of its spending now going to the elderly and/or disabled. By my rough count, in 2007, seniors accounted, one way or another, for about half of federal spending.”

So what is different in 2021? Why isn’t the government’s 20% share of GDP enough to enable it to function without taking us even further into debt? Well as Krugman makes clear it’s because two things are happening, things that politicians mostly don’t talk about because it’s not clear that anything can be done to stop them other than remedies just too painful to even be considered by elected representatives.

First is the fact that the elderly population is growing, set to increase by as much as a fourth 2021. And these additional people have got to be protected, or at least no politician active today is prepared to take away any of their protections.

Second the cost of medical care itself is also growing, and especially for the elderly population with the most need for care and where new procedures, devices, medicines etc. appear almost daily, and in regard to which the elderly population can’t be denied.

Krugman estimated that by 2007 seniors accounted, one way or another, for about half of federal spending. Growing their numbers by a quarter or more by 2021 federal spending would have to grow accordingly. And, says Krugman, a good portion of the additional costs would have to be met by additional taxes.

Now, isn’t it incumbent on those who would defend “no new taxes,” such as Speaker Boehner, to explain to us just how the government will provide the social security, medicare and medicaid entitlements to the additional seniors? So far he and others like him haven’t done so.

You know when you stop to think about it we’re secretive about so many important things, be it the conversation of a sinner with his confessor, the surgeon’s actions in the operating room, the discussion between a husband and wife about to separate, the chain of events that took down Bin Laden in Abbottabad.

In fact as a general rule those things most easily seen by the public are of little or no importance, and probably of little interest. This situation, when so much that is important is kept from us, explains the great attraction of stories and now films, for in both the authors and producers are making what are usually private things public.

People have always wanted terribly to see behind the walls, the closed doors, and stories well told most of all satisfy this craving.

But you might say that more and more the public is being given access. And to some extent it’s true. Televisions in the court rooms, visitor balconies in the operating rooms, open borders between more and more countries, although the conversations between lawyers and clients, priests and parishioners, husbands and wives are still privileged and private.

And I’m probably not advocating that even these walls be taken down, or am I?

It is a generally accepted truth that people behave more responsibly when in the public eye. For don’t we all change our behavior when we know we are being watched. I know I do, and that in public situations I try to adopt more carefully considered, more responsible behavior.

Shouldn’t this fact alone about who we are push us even more to make more and more private goings on public? Wouldn’t the result be right away greater civility?

Do the lower creatures hide their actions from one another? I don’t think so. Among our closest simian relatives touching, fighting, sex of course, and defecation, all such acts are done in full public view. Does our hiding these acts somehow make them more responsible, more respectable?

I don’t know. I do know that we have managed to hide from our own children while in our care most of our own inescapably bodily functions, and as a result these functions have probably taken on in our children’s eyes an undue importance. An importance they don’t have, not only among the lower orders, but even among some of our fellows, as in the slum neighborhoods of Bombay and other cities where there are no facilities.

What got me going on this subject was Michael Goldstein’s blog today. He is speaking of teacher evaluations —a subject much in the news since first George Bush’s and Ted Kennedy’s NCLB, and then President Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan as secretary of Education.

Michael as usual talks all about and around his subject, not failing to use, as he often does, a sports analogy, the one today taken from professional basketball. For Michael is not afraid to look in any direction for solutions to the problem of teaching and learning.

In this blog he is suggesting that it would be helpful if we could somehow see inside the classroom, if the interaction of students and teachers in the up until now privacy of the classroom could become to some real extent public.

For then it would mean, and I believe he is correct about this, that the sheer numbers of people, all kinds of people, not just educators, seeing for the first time the inner workings of our classrooms, would be sure to come up with a wealth of useful suggestions as to how both learning and teaching could be improved.

In other words, in so many teaching situations what keeps real change from happening is that there is no discerning public to comment and give new life to the too often lifeless routine of the classroom.

Here is what Michael actually says, go to “Starting an Ed School.” to see the entire Blog post.

I will explain my idea in a future post. It involves putting lots of teacher video on the web. But only with explicit permission of teacher and kids for each clip.

Essentially, we’d create a game that allows anyone to try to predict student learning by watching teachers in action.

My belief is some new insights would emerge that move our field forward. Whether those insights will come from a retired calc teacher in Omaha, an off-Broadway actor who knows something about performance, a psych grad student in India, or a security guard at a pork and beans cannery, I have no idea.

But I’d bet a lot that someone would move us forward if we made the raw video easy to play with and think about.

Brendan Greeley in a cover story, Why Bin Laden Lost, written for Bloomberg Business Week says that,

“The United States has no purpose [this being] perhaps its greatest achievement. … The United States was not founded for the greater glory of anything,… [is not] the necessary outcome of history, but [exists] for the freedom to collect figurines, to join a clogging troupe (a type of folk dance), to take a road trip….

“The most successful organizing principle the world has ever known is a simple guarantee that we can buy and do things that have no point greater than the satisfaction of our own happiness.”

A state exists only, Greeley reminds us, to secure life and liberty and thereby allow the full pursuit of happiness.

That’s why Americans have always loved, and read Mark Twain more than Herman Melville. In fact, when Melville died in 1891, his death went almost unnoticed.

We were and probably still are much more with Twain. It is still enough for most of us to go down river on a flat boat, or perhaps stop and start a business of our own, be it only a fruit stand, the kind of things that Twain, himself, cared most about.

One certainly doesn’t need to sail the waters of the Western globe in search of a particular sperm whale as Ahab, nor even less does one need to attempt the restoration in the present of a 7th century Muslim Empire as Bin Laden.

Among us the Ahabs and the Bin Ladens will always fail because we don’t love their big ideas. We love the little things, being seated at a beach café and feeling the sand still on our feet and the ocean breeze in our hair, being in the Apple store awaiting our turn to speak with one of the many blue shirted sales people who will have answers for our questions,

or just being at home with our families and friends and watching and commenting on the endless series of extraordinary goings on in the world that come miraculously into our living rooms on the big screen.