Fucked up

I've never been the kind of guy who school was something I just had to do but hated. In general, I've been someone who loved school, warts and all. I've had my problems with school, of course. As everyone does. But, when push came to shove, I generally enjoyed studying and learning more than most people. Still do.

When I was a senior in high school, my school won the state basketball championship. So our senior class had a senior gyp day to commemorate the honor. Virtually all of my fellow seniors left school that afternoon, except for me. I was in a child care class, in preparation for a teaching career. And I went and took care of the kids while all my friends took the afternoon off.

I just liked school more than most people.

Until now.

With all the Federal, state, and local legislation. With No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and every layer of bureaucracy I face at the local, state, and federal levels, as a teacher. For the first time in my life, I'm really beginning to hate school.

With all the bureaucracy and all the implicit leveraging behind them, I am, for the first time, beginning to hate being somewhere that I have organized my whole life around, I loved it so much.

It's really fucked up is what it is.

To take something someone loves and to fuck it all up. Because you care more about controlling them than just letting them do what they love.

For three weeks, I've been really hating my job, and all the bullshit that goes along with it, for this reason. The more people around me act this like is the way things are supposed to be, the less I want to be a part of it.

And you know what the really fucked up thing is about it? Most of those people never have and likely never will love education the way I have. It's a job for them. Or it was something they had to put up with until it was out of the way.

It was never like that for me.

Until now. Fucked up.

And I've gotten to a point where I don't even care anymore. I just want out. I want to support myself independently and just get away from people until they learn to stop twisting my arm to do something I already love so their egos can feel more secure that they are responsible for my efforts than I am. It's a really fucked up way to think about others, really. And I am tired of being subject to it, is the truth.

And now I just want a life of independent work so I can avoid it all as much as possible.

And let someone else let everyone else bully them into their own warped sense of how education and the world should work.

All so they can avoid the real challenges that come with an honest liberal education. And learning to reason better through life.

Do as I say, not as I do (or go directly to jail)

It's really the most bullshit part of the current health care legislation.

Pelosi: Jail time "very fair" for failing to buy your patriotic Obamacare coverage



Bill Clinton and Michael Moore don't take care of their own health. But they lead the campaign to put people in jail who don't buy insurance to take care of theirs, even if they don't need or want it.

Oh, and these are liberals, by the way. In case you'd lost track. Liberals are the folks who put people in jail who decide they don't want health insurance, or who are homeless, or who otherwise inconvenience them. Or really anything they disagree with these days.

Because that's what liberals are. Liberals are people who put people in jail or who bully and intimidate people who disagree with them. In case you had any questions what it meant to be liberal.

That is, of course, what it means to be a liberal, as anyone who has ever been one knows. It's what the term liberal means.

To put people in jail who disagree with you.

Could be the opposite. I've lost track myself.

George Orwell, I'm pretty sure, would have something to say about this political period. And I'm fairly certain it would not be flattering.

All I know is that liberal kid I was not too terribly far back would not recognize this as liberalism at all.

To be a liberal meant to be compassionate and thoughtful, when I was growing up. It was the reason why I admired such people when I was growing up.

And legislation like this health care proposal demonstrates just how much liberalism has turned away from its original and strongest principles.

So enamoured they've become of power.

Because that's what a liberal is. Someone who covets power. Because too little power to fix our problems is exactly what has ailed the world for most of its history. And liberals were the folks who finally figured that out.

Power enobles, as one famous liberal once said. And absolute power enobles absolutely.

And now, finally, we can make the progress that all that power makes possible.