I miss my friend...

You ever have fuck-ups in your life that stand out as the most serious ones?...

I do...

I've fucked up a lot in my life...

I've been a shitty son...and a shitty brother...and a shitty student...and a shitty teacher...and a shitty team member...and a shitty millions of things in my life...

But the one I really regret...

Was being a shitty friend...boyfriend...and then friend again...to both the very best friend I have had in my life, Brandi...and her husband, Greg...who've I've not even met...and I was shitty to him, I'm afraid...

I'm working on my on-line banking confirmation of information notice in my email...

And I decide to play Darryl Worley's I Miss My Friend...

And I just realized that the one most important fuck-up that I've had in my life...was how shitty I treated Brandi...and Greg...

I was demanding...and pushy...and domineering...and too quick to conflict...

And just, generally, kind of dick...

And it is the most serious mistake, generally, that I have ever made in my life...

Most of the places in my life where I have been shitty have been around being too demanding and pushy and domineering and quick to conflict, I think...

And now that I am at a place in my life where I've gotten pretty good at being a pretty decent guy...

It just becomes so much clearer to me just how hard I was on Brandi...

I found out my grandma had a potentially terminal illness...and I need someone to talk with...because it's devastating me...and I ask Brandi, when she is in Wichita, next, to go talk with my grandma...since Brandi is the friend I have that my grandma seemed to hit it off with the best...I don't get a response...and I go off in an email telling Brandi to get just get her ass over to my grandma's house when she's in Wichita and to stop making everything about me and her and her new marriage...

I'm such a dick, sometimes...

I've been a dick so many times with Brandi I can hardly count them all...at one level...it makes sense...we did talk most days or spend almost every day together for about 5 years...and I still consider her one of the closest friends I've ever had in my life, even if we talk rarely, if at all, these days...

But at another level...

It doesn't matter...

When we're dicks...we're still dicks...and we're still responsible for being dicks...

Most people don't take responsibility for being dicks very well, I don't think...really...it's much of the thesis of my work...

So...I have a policy of no excuses...within reason...there are limits to all of our abilities...no matter how much we might want to transcend them...

I have many things I wish I could have done better in my life...

I wish I could have found a better way for Tom and I to work together during my grad program...where I could finish the program...and not always have Tom on my back about one thing or another, completely oblivious, apparently, that I might be in grad school for my own purposes as well as for the purposes that he might have for me...there's a big part of me that would like to have been more patient with Tom's impatience and pushiness and general lack of appreciation that I was in grad school for reasons bigger than his own dreams and ambitions, even, and that he needed to be humble in the face of that...and not constantly be on my ass...

I wish I could have somehow been a better teacher/role-model/whatever for my friends here in Lawrence that I'm so frustrated with, right now...to somehow get underneath whatever bullshit and cynicism and general denial of how their bullshit affects me, them, and all of our relationships...and how they're ignoring it and covering under layers of drug use did not make it go away...and was seriously hurting our relationship...no matter how much they wanted to wish it away...

I wish I could have been a better brother to my sisters and brother...and a better son to my father...and my mom...while she was with me...and even after...I wish I wouldn't have been such a dick so much of the time...I wish that I could have somehow matured without having to make so many serious mistakes as a child and a young man...

Of course...I and noone can have any of these or similar such wishes about the past come true...it just ain't possible...something that too many people have such a hard time coming to terms with, I think...

But the fuck up I wish I could take back...more than any other that I've made in my life...because it involved someone closer to me than I've ever been close with someone similarly again, since...

Is fucking up my friendship with Brandi...and being shitty to her husband, Greg...who I've never met...and who I'm sure is a good guy, given Brandi's judgment...which...while not as good as mine:):):) (I love giving Brandi shit:):):)...she's very competitive:):):)...so she hates hearing shit like that:):):)LOL:):):)...is pretty good...so I'm sure Greg is good guy:):):)...

I swear to God that I have navigated this and all of my experiences with Brandi (and everyone, really) as well as I possibly could...

But...that just seems to be life, too much of the time...

That our goals in life are perpetually just somewhat beyond our grasp...

And my goal of being a really outstanding friend to Brandi...who really has been a pretty outstanding friend to me -- not as outstanding a friend as I've been to her, of course:):):)...but still pretty outstanding:):):) -- has just been perpetually just outside of my grasp...

Anyway...

This is the fuck up in my life that I regret most...

I miss my friend...

Have a great week, everyone...

Ben

The complicated question of a pullout in Iraq...

Army Girl...

...has a really interesting set of letters that I think folks should check out...

Military folks and family members, some with members they have lost, weighing in as non-partisan as they can on the prospect of a pullout from Iraq...

It's a complicated question, I think...

My first thought...is that Iraqis need to be ready to handle the difficult security issues on their own...and Americans, like it or not, are just better prepared to deal with a whole host of tactical security issues than are Iraqi soldiers...

But the key issue that prompts discussion of an American pullout...is that public opinion in Iraq does seem to support a pullout...and has for quite a while, now, from the polls I've seen (though I totally grant that I may not have seen enough of those polls, at this point)...

The question is...are Iraqis ready to handle their own security issues...and I'm not sure they are...

But...if Americans leave...the big question is...will the insurgency die down...for lack of an American presence...

I, honestly, don't know how to answer that question...I am pessimistic about Iraqis' being able to handle security issues, on their own, as is...I'm quite confident that American military leaders are doing their best to prepare Iraqis to handle those issues on their own...and I'm quite confident that once they and their Iraqi counterparts say that they feel confident in the potential success of a U.S. pullout, that they will say so...

And I haven't heard them say so, yet...

I've heard ordinary Iraqis say that they're ready for a pullout...I've heard Democrats and some Republicans in Congress say that they're ready for a pullout...

But I haven't heard the Iraqi men and women who will be responsible for that security situation...and the Americans and others who are training them say that they are ready, yet...

If Americans leaving will get fewer people killed...then obviously it would be a good idea...

But if Iraqi military, law enforcement, and others responsible for security would be overwhelmed by an insurgency that will only shift its wrath from Americans to the coalition-alligned Iraqi government...then there is serious concern about what will better facilitate a better security situation in Iraq...

The two groups that are not being asked what they think about a pullout...whose thoughts on the situation matter most...

Are Iraqi servicepeople...and American servicepeople...especially their leadership...and others...who can give a better idea of realities on the ground...

I would definitely encourage the American people to show patience with this process until these folks can be consulted...to make security decisions that have life and death consequences for many Iraqis as well as Americans...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Why I love the path I've chosen:):):)...

It is so interesting...listening to Bill Clinton's memoirs...how even a remarkably more thoughtful politician like Bill Clinton...can be too much focussed on political strategy...and not enough on policy ideas...

Bill is a very good man, I think...and a really thoughtful politician...far more thoughtful than most people in politics...

But his memoirs are still too caught up in campaigning and wins and losses...and not enough in ideas and profound wisdom about life, generally...though there is plenty of that, too, in this memoirs:):)...if you get a chance, I definitely recommend them:):)...

And listening to them...reminds me of more idealistic and broad-minded leadership in the country's recent history...and reinforces for me why I'm so glad that I decided to spend my time working on issues like education and poverty, on the ground, and ideas, for the long term...there is just so much more profound good that can be done for people by thinking deeply about the issues we all face...and developing constructive ideas to deal with them more effectively:):)...and how much useful, stupid bullshit stands in for important ideas and directions in too much democratic politics:):):)...

The New York Times writes an interesting article, today, about the most recent Supreme Court ruling on lawsuits by parents of children in special education against school districts...

Special Education's Rule Effects Unclear...

It's a good ruling, I think...there is plenty to improve in public and private education for students in special education or students who might be in special education settings were it not for more successful and effective school and classroom efforts...

But lawsuits will not make things better...period...no way...

The things that need to get done to make things better in schools for kids, generally, and for kids facing the biggest challenges in schools, which kids in special education often are, can only be done with more people from all kinds of backgrounds -- teachers, parents, administrators, students, community members, district personell...everyone -- taking more and more authentic responsibility for their own and for one anothers' success in school...

That is often easier said than done, frankly...but it still must be done...at all schools...that serve all children...

I'm fairly committed to and clear that the best ideas around improving this situation are those who want to offer kids and teachers and administrators and schools more freedom and autonomy -- which better support more responsibility and self-governance, which we want kids, as much as teachers and administrators, to learn -- with reform options like public school choice, charters, vouchers, and a more general and clearer commitment to improving school environments by giving children and others more freedom to learn and grow, which allow people to make more mistakes, more quickly and learn more over time, as a consequence...and, in the course of that...to hold everyone to a higher expecation and allow them to hold themselves to a higher expectation of responsibility than they generally hold themselves to, now...

Melissa and I were just talking, today, about the problem of political propaganda in contemporary democracy...how it distorts and manipulates serious and thoughtful democratic discussions...and what to do about it...

And how, I told her, when I was in grad school, studying radicalism on the right and on the left, reading David Horowitz' journey from radical left to radical right...and seeing how little David had actually learned about his own self-righteous tendencies and the ways that they undermined more thoughtful engagement on important political matters...

I realized that there really wasn't anything you could do...except hold everyone to a higher standard...to expect everyone to think more...to see through the bullshit of campaigns and political discourse that too often dominates because self-righteous political and party activists and polemnicists can't conceive that they may, just possibly, not have all the answers to the various problems the world faces...and my own terribly radical idea that intelligent discussion would be a better way to work through difficult problems in the world...

And the only way to get us there...is to build on the already really great work being done in schools like Eisenhower Middle School where I work in Kansas City, Kansas...to raise the bar for everyone...kids, teachers, administrators, school district personell, law enforcement, advocates, judges, legislators, Presidents and other politicians, business leaders and business employees, artists, writers...you name it...

The only way forward...ever...on a whole host of issues we all face...

Is by raising the bar for everyone...

And that doesn't happen by trying to beat others in submission...or suing them into submission, as the parents in this suit were looking to do...

It is done by leading people to think more deeply, clearly, and profoundly about the very serious issues that we all face...

And...as at my school...and every school...there are some people who are going to do this better than others...guaranteed...

And everyone is still accountable to that highest standard...

The great thing about growing up...is realizing that there is no need to bow down before peoples' selfish expectations...to lower the curve...to make it easier for them...because...you get far enough in education...you realize that this stuff means something...and that the problems that education is meant to address in the world...do not get easier just because the people dealing with them get frustrated doing the work...

For me...or for my students...

The war in Iraq, right now, is a brilliant illustration of this principle, I think:):):)...

Somewhere in the range of 90% of the people I hear talking about the war know dick-squat about what they're talking about...I'm glad they're involved...it's important that they care enough to be involved...though more humility would be a refreshing contribution to that conversation...

And the people who do seem to understand, better, what's going on...are the folks who take thinking about that situation...and its deepest implications...the most seriously...

Same goes for schools...same goes for domestic policy...same goes for business...same goes for military affairs...same goes for criminology and law enforcement...same goes for all kinds of sciences, of course...

Same goes for life...

And there is no politician...no leader...no thinker, even...who will ever change that...

What we can do...is expect everyone to think better...and about the deeper and more profound implications of their choices...and to be as free to do that as possible...

Why we would look to politics...with so many people persistently avoiding responsibility...to demonstrate what it means to be responsible (though, for many people...folks are far more responsible than they, themselves, are)...I will never understand...

The most responsible people in cultures, generally...are the folks who think deepest and most profoundly and innovatively about their most serious problems...and I am honored to be able to do that kind of work...

Today, with Melissa...as I'm feeling more confidently about the implications of my own ideas...specifically least possible necessary aggression...but a lot of other alligned ideas, as well, that promote peoples' freedom to develop a stronger sense of responsibility to tackle their most serious social and other problems...

I'm asking her...

Do you realize the implications of my work, if I'm right...which I feel more confident about the more I work with them?...

Genocide...dictatorships...terrorism...murder...rape...kidnapping...and other violent crimes...political repression...poverty...stronger economies and funding for a whole host of issues...political and financial corruption...drug abuse...gang activity...

There are very few serious social issues that are not, in some way, touched by this work...

It is very exciting, I have to say...

And I'm prouder than pumpkin pie to be able to do this stuff...and to facilitate school and policy development that will both give people more freedom and to contribute more thoughtfully to a process of dealing with these issues, as well:):)...

Have a great day, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben