The Harried Husband Excuse

I dodged two bullets this morning while driving in to work.

The second bullet was a typical event in which traffic during rush hour came to an unexpected stop and I missed being rear ended by a van by mere inches. That was a close one.

But the first bullet is rather amusing in hindsight...

After dropping my wife off at work this morning, I did a "Hollywood" stop at an intersection, and got pulled over by a law officer. I also didn't have the most recently updated proof of insurance card in my vehicle, and the officer informed me that I had been speeding after failing to come to a full stop at a stop sign.

He began to lecture me on how my driving was reckless and a danger to pedestrians and other drivers...and he wanted to know why I was driving like that.

I lied.

I said that I was dropping my wife off for work, and that we were late, and that she was yelling at me for making her late, so that after dropping her off, I was a little amped up, and not driving safely because of that...and that I was sorry.

The officer than told me "Oh boy, I know how that one goes. Look, I'll let you off this time...just make sure you don't make her late again. It's hard to deal with an angry wife first thing in the morning."

I said, "I hear ya. Thanks for the break!"

LMAO.

Thank goodness the officer that pulled me over was obviously married to a woman for which he lives in fear of her emotional state...playing on his sympathies got me out of over $300 in tickets and an appearance in court to show my current insurance card.

Yes, They Most Certainly Want You to Be Helpless

I ended my last post with: "Our educational system was designed precisely to condition our children into docile dependency and mindless conformity...the hallmark characteristics of sheeple."

I forgot to add defenseless and vulnerable...just like a sheep led to slaughter.

Reading this post by Talleyrand in which he notes how school indoctrinate students with the following values:

Don’t be a bully (also known as all violence is evil, even when you defend yourself, be a rat instead and go to the teacher authority figure)

This reminded me of an incident I experienced when I was in the seventh grade.

I used to get bullied all the time -- as I've written about before, I was raised by a domineering mother who constantly told me it was wrong to fight, that I should always tell the teachers/school people if I was being bullied or attacked, etc. In one instance, a particular kid used to bully me all the time, and one day I just got sick of it.

I didn't have the courage, knowledge or experience to stand up to him at that age, but when he tried to make me give up my seat on the school bus one day because he wanted to sit next to the window, I simply refused to move.

He began to threaten me, but I was angry and fed up with the bullying, and I just ignored him.

He jumped on me and began to pound on me relentlessly, and I never fought back. I just covered up and waited for someone else to rescue me.

Since this was after school, this occurred while we were boarding the bus while still on School grounds, and the lady bus driver summoned the security guards (who were always stationed at the bus stop area after school) to come onto the bus and 'Breakup the fight' (more like a one-sided beat-down of yours truly).

I will never forget the looks of pity and contempt from the girls on the bus (particularly the girl I had a crush on at the time), and disgust from my friends, as the guards grabbed me and the bully and escorted us off the bus. See, this was a "fight" so I had to be dragged to the Vice Principals office at the same time as the bully.

Needless to say, the bus driver came into the office and told the Vice Principal what had actually happened, that I had not fought back, that this kid attacked me, and I did nothing wrong.

The VP began to berate the bully, he began crying, and the VP literally walked over and began to pat my head and rub my shoulders. I don't remember what she said, but she gave him a 3 day suspension and a month of detention and told him he was not allowed to ride the bus home that day, they were going to call his parents to come pick him up. She than told him to go to the bathroom and wash his face.

When he left, she began to praise me for "not fighting" and for being a good boy etc. I don't remember her precise words, but it was praise. She essentially patted me on the back and reinforced the notion that I was a model student for "non-violence." She called my mom and told her what happened, and put me on the phone with her so that my mom could tell me how proud she was of me for not fighting back.

To this day, the memory of this event fills me with nausea. It's one of my primary motivations I've had in pushing myself to train martial arts for so hard and for so long. That sense of helplessness, weakness and impotence in the face of violence has hurt and scarred me far more than the punches the bully reigned down on me that day.

I was teased by many boys and my friends for weeks after that for being a "wimp" and a "pussy" and a "fag" for not fighting back. It was utterly disgraceful, and I wouldn't even look at, much less talk to the girl I had a crush on for months after wards. That was probably the biggest blow to my 13 year old self-esteem; knowing the one girl I was head over heels infatuated with, was there to witness my humiliation that day. While that boy never did bully me again (I think he got into a lot of trouble with his own parents for being suspended), other bullies knew an easy target when they saw one. The bullying on me over the next few years by others intensified and escalated. It only ended when I finally fought back against a bully when I was a sophmore in high school.

Knowing I was getting bullied mercilessly, my Father took me on the side one day -- well out of ear shot of my mother for fear she would hear him and yell at him for teaching us kids to be violent -- and he told me that the next time I got bullied, I should punch the kid right in the nose as hard as I could. Even if the bully proceeded to kick my ass, it would end my bullying problems, because bullies will only pick on kids that are easy victims who take it.

My Dad's advice worked, I did get my ass kicked, but I did bust up a bully's nose pretty badly, and I no longer got bullied much from that day forward.

I just wish my Dad did not let my mother cooperate with the School system in making me a docile victim several years earlier.

Most People Are Sheeple

Most People Are Sheeple

This little rhyme has been running through my mind as of late.

I think it every time I stand at a crosswalk, and see groups of people standing there, mindlessly waiting for the blinking white "Walk" light before they proceed to cross the street while texting on their iPhones...when any observant person can easily see no oncoming traffic for hundreds of yards in either direction. Do you really need a blinking light to tell you it's safe to cross a street with no oncoming cars in sight?

I think it every time I stand in line at a grocery store and see some morbidly obese person with a cart full of processed, packaged junk "food" products, or the long lines of cars cued up at the fast food restaurant drive throughs. Can you not see yourself in the mirror everyday and make the connection between the junk in your trunk and the junk you put into your mouth?

I think it every time I see someone with an Obama or a "GO Green!" bumper sticker on their sub-compact, hybrid car driving precisely at the speed limit in the left hand lane of the freeway, oblivious to the people behind them trying to pass the even slower senior citizens clogging up the other lanes. Do you really think anyone is impressed by your expressed support for "Our Most Historical President Ever?" Do you really think sporting environmental slogans on your hybrid vehicles are doing your part in "saving the planet?"

I think it every time I hear people discussing how "terrible Tiger Woods" is. Hello....if Tiger had been the one to hit his cheating spouse with a golf club, no one would be calling HIM a victim or worthy of a multi-million dollar divorce settlement!

I am finding myself experiencing a continually diminishing threshold of tolerance for the indoctrinated behaviors and beliefs manifesting themselves in the brainwashed citizenry of our BraveNewWorldOrder.

And it all goes back to the very root of our problem...the institutionalized, bureaucratic system that we call "Public Education" that is largely responsible for churning out a population of sheeple, easily herded, cajoled and controlled by their Tell-A-Visions.



Former public school teacher, and author of Legally STUPiD: Why Johnny doesn’t have to read, R C Murray, uses Orwell's term, Proles, which is pretty much the same thing as "sheeple" in his recent article, Our Prole-Producing Schools.

In order to fix any problem, we have to identify the source of the problem, and although there are at least seven principal malefactors I’d blame for our big government problem, I blame our public schools the most. In fact, I’ve made it my life’s goal to tell all Americans why they shouldn’t have their children in public schools.

For four years I taught in and fought The System, which is not the failure many folks think it to be. For 150 years, public schools have been doing exactly what they were designed to do – produce proles – that functionally illiterate class of people Orwell saw as the “hope” for Oceania, a fictional country ruled over by an all-powerful government called The Party or simply Big Brother. Do you think it’s coincidental the current administration talks so much about hope to his disciple-constituents, the majority of whom can barely read and write and who pay no taxes?

While I certainly agree with R C Murray's main point here, I don't think the goal is illiteracy...after all, you need all the proles -- sheeple -- to be able to at least have somewhat competent reading skills so they can read and absorb all of the official propaganda in print and on Tell-a-Vision. What the schools really do is produce a mass of people who are incapable of original thought...people who mindlessly submit to authority and willingly do as they are told; to know their PLACE.

Individual knowledge and personal beliefs too often conflict with government goals. This is the reason for one of today’s teaching strategies, “Group Learning.” Those diverse learners mentioned earlier cannot understand what they read (if they can read at all), and they can’t explain their thoughts (if they have any) in writing, so they need help. Public schools now place at least one accelerated-gifted student with two or three diverse learners in a “small group setting” in which they “work together” to complete a learning project.

In reality, the AG student does all the work, but everybody gets the same passing grade. No child gets left behind. In Legally STUPiD, I satirically propose “Group Testing” for all standardized tests. One AG student is paired with two diverse learners (a.k.a., proles) who simply copy his or her answers on their score sheet.

It’s a learning experience for everyone. The AG student learns his or her role as a productive member of society whose taxes are necessary to support the non-productive proles depending on him. The proles learn to support politicians who support them with entitlement programs. In a nutshell, this is how our Constitutional republic has become a socialist state!

Now THAT would be an education in how the "REAL" world in today's America works...

Another public school teacher, Jerome Kohn also contributed to today's LewRockwell.com with an article, When a School Gets Sick, which goes into more details on the current situation with regards to the latest initiatives being carried out in our "Public Education" system:

Being a libertarian, I have never been comfortable working in a government-run public school, but a PowerPoint presentation at a recent faculty meeting made me realize just how monstrous the system really is. The presentation was on something called RTI (Response to Intervention), and it began with a slide entitled "When a kid gets sick..." While RTI is hailed as a revolutionary new approach, it is really just an old practice dressed up in new jargon. With both RTI and its predecessor, nonperforming or uncooperative students are identified and treated as if they suffer from some kind of illness.

In either case, the process typically ends with parents seated at a long conference table facing grim-faced teachers, administrators, counselors, social workers and perhaps even a psychiatrist all armed with file folders full of evaluations and test results. The remedy these "experts" prescribe usually involves placement in some Special Education program (i.e. low expectations dumping ground) and sometimes even the prescription of some dangerous mind-altering drug like Ritalin. Few parents ever object to or question these measures. Many parents even insist on them believing this special treatment is necessary to help their "ill" child. Supporters of RTI may protest that they are only trying to help and that Special Education or drugs are only last resorts. That may be true, but they fail to see the stigma attached to the child being labeled and processed like some kind of lab rat, and they fail to acknowledge the record of failure for all of their "interventions." Most important, they fail to even consider that the problem may be with the school and not with the child.

May? I think it's an almost certainty! More specifically, it's little boys who are naturally rambunctious and inquisitive who are simply out of place in the strict, regimented and dumbed-down curriculum of our BraveNewSchools who are deemed "ill" and dosed up on Ritalin.

But everyone knows about how the system does a disservice to the "special education" students...the learning disabled and intellectually challenged students caught in the gears of the system.

I found Kohn's other point much more illuminating in diagnosing the true purpose of our education system - his observations of the "gifted and talented" students. The "achievers." Those kids deemed "bright."

Being labeled gifted means entering a fiercely competitive world of point mongering and grade grubbing. Honor students work extraordinarily hard to please their teachers and other authority figures. In academics, they fight for every point and are always looking for "extra credit." Typically, the parents of these students are also highly involved (i.e. applying pressure) and express tremendous concern about their son’s or daughter’s grades. At parent-teacher conferences, it is only grades in fact that come up for discussion – never learning. For the honor student, getting a "C" (and for some even a "B") on a major test, project or (God forbid!) on a report card brings on a personal and family crisis. It never occurs to these students or to their parents that these grades are merely the subjective evaluations of their teachers who know little to nothing about the person they are evaluating. Indeed, the parents know little to nothing about the teacher doing the evaluating.

Nevertheless, the honor student’s self-esteem and parental approval is completely tied to the teacher-assigned letter grades. In addition to obsessing over grades, honor students also join many clubs and go out for competitive sports. Many times they do this because they actually enjoy such activity, but just as often they join for the same reason they fight for grades – because it is expected of them and because they believe it is the key to getting into a big-name university. The life of the typical honor student is a life of frenetic activity, competition, homework and anxiety. Rarely is there time for reflection, solitude or contentment. Upon graduation from high school, many honor students know only that they are to go to college. As for what they want to do with their lives or what their real passion is, most have no clue. Many will never know.

I remember when I was in 5th grade, and my Mother tried to get me to enter the "gifted and talented" program at my school. My testing scores put me in the top percentile in my class, but the G&T teacher told my Mother that she wouldn't accept me into her class because of my behavioral and attitude problems (I spent many an afternoon in detention or in the Vice Principal's office getting yelled at).

I remember at that time feeling devastated by her rejection. I knew most of the kids in that G&T class, and I KNEW I had the intelligence to match or surpass most of them in educational achievement. Now I laugh at the memory of my rejection. I have always had a problem with mindless submission to authority, and after thinking about what Kohn relates here, I'm now 100% sure the G&T teacher was absolutely right in denying my admittance into her program.

Still, Kohn's most relevant point that resonates with me is this:

As for learning, most adults I know have forgotten most of the subjects they allegedly learned in school (even those they got A’s and B’s in), and what they do remember is usually politically correct nonsense. Witness how many parents are unable to help their children with their homework. We learn only those things we genuinely want to learn.

Forcing students to take classes in subjects they are either uninterested in or not ready for is pointless and only frustrates student and teacher alike. At best, teachers in our public schools are mere entertainers filling the dreary hours of the school day. Despite all the clever classroom activities, worksheets, and projects, how many former high school honor students ten years after graduation can still factor a quadratic equation, prove a geometry theorem or explain and classify the different types of rock in the Earth’s crust? Unless they are professional mathematicians or geologists, who really cares if they can?

This is so true on so many different levels.

I spent 5 years in my State University. I took all sorts of different courses to satisfy my liberal arts curriculum requirements. I had a cumulative 3.6 gpa in 5 years of college...and yet there are only a few classes I attended in which I learned something that sticks with me to this day, 10 years later.

But those things I endeavored on my own to study and practice? Like playing musical instruments, or martial arts? I genuinely wanted to learn those things, and I certainly gave myself a real education in those areas of my interest...no degrees, institutional hoop-jumping and other bureaucratic institutionalization were required for me to seek out a true education.

Unfortunately, it seems the only thing students actually do remember from their government-provided education is the government’s propaganda. One has to wonder, in fact, if such indoctrination has been the purpose of government schooling all along. How else but through indoctrination does one explain people’s willingness to vote to raise their own taxes, sacrifice themselves or their children to the government’s military, or continue to hold to an almost cult-like belief in a system that has an unbroken record of failure? To get a sense of the damage, compare the attitude of today’s typical American with that of our non-schooled ancestors. The spirited self-reliance, daring and individualism that once defined the American character have been replaced by a docile dependency and mindless conformity.

I wonder no longer. Our educational system was designed precisely to condition our children into docile dependency and mindless conformity...the hallmark characteristics of sheeple.