Welcome to the Idiocracy

It's frustrating times to be a teacher.  On a fundamental level, you believe in the ability to shape minds into powerful tools that will enable your students to enjoy fruitful, productive and creative lives.  You hope to instill in them an appreciation for nuance and the importance of understanding the world as it is, rather than as it would be in their imagination.  You are trying to create people who will revel in the life of the mind.

In the end you just hope they don't stick their tongue in a wall socket to see what electricity tastes like.

I often see former students at reunions.  They are fresh out of college and full of energy, optimism and cash.  Because they are working for hedge funds.  The young men are fat from sitting behind a trading desk all day and drinking all night.  The young women seem to be emaciated.

Is that what you were working towards?

And these are some of the best and brightest kids in the country.

It's been the Worst Fall Ever in our household.  We started the school year off by putting down the dog.  The missus's team is struggling.  Thing 1 had trouble adjusting to a new school.  The missus and I have been struggling to fight off illness and I've recently come down with a case of poison ivy so severe that the CDC is monitoring it to make sure it's not leprosy.

But mostly, we just wonder why we teach sometimes.  That's not fair to hang that on the missus, so let's just say, I've really started to wonder why I teach.

It's a hard job, and despite the architecture reminiscent of Yale, we're not well compensated.  We're not poor, but we've resigned ourselves to the fact that we will always struggle a bit to make ends meet.

But the students who shuffled through our courses with adequate grades and adequate effort are working on Wall Street and coming up with winner ideas like CDOs and CDSs and printing their own money.

Today, one of the Wall Street Smart Guys who helped crash the economy landed his helicopter on campus to visit his granddaughter.

Bully for him.

But apparently last night was a reminder that America is - if not a "center right nation" that the pundits talk about - a "fuck you, I got mine nation".

Poor kids want health insurance?  Fuck you, I got mine.

People with underwater mortgages want to rewrite the terms of the loan to stay in the house?  Fuck you, I got mine.

Unemployed for two years?  Fuck you, I got mine.

Oil spills devastating the Gulf Coast?  Drill, baby, drill, and fuck you, I got mine.

We have lost our ability to think and act as a community, in which we value everyone.  The missus had a discussion with a sweet elderly lady who talked about "those people".  There will always be a "those people". It helps you know who your people are, I guess.

But great things are only done when we think in terms of "our people".  That means progressive taxes to fund common goals.  That means a return to civic virtue.  That means no more "Fuck you, I got mine".

Obama wandered around trying to get us to see "our people" instead of "those people".  He failed.  Anyone would have.

Because we live in an Idiocracy.  We blind ourselves to the world as it is, and insist on the world of our imaginations.  We can balance the budget with tax cuts.  Obama raised taxes when he actually cut them.  There are death panels.  Obama, not Bush, bailed out the banks.  And trying to make a case based on the evidence is pointless, because fuck you, I got mine.  The "mine" in this case are my opinions.

And in an intellectual climate like that, it's hard to get out of bed everyday and teach.  It's hard to tell yourself that you're making a difference.

So, yeah, Tea Party guy.  That Hope thing isn't working out real well right now.

But I'll be there tomorrow.  In the front of the class.  Because even though we live in the Idiocracy, I ain't no quitter.

Update from Esquire:
If all the polls are correct, and if Chuck Todd is right to have turned up the Orgasmatron to eleven in his happy place, then we are all going to be complicit in a massive exercise in empowered heckling, a national free-for-all over the one microphone in the hall. It has been a remarkable two years for that sort of thing, and that’s where Jon Stewart went off the rails the other day, when he traded sense for sensibility. The problem is not that we don’t play nice enough with each other. The problem is that one side plays by its own rules in a universe of its own devising, with its own physical laws, its unique economics, and its own history and theology, and that universe is now devouring the real one.