The principal and the girlfriend

I have finally had an experience that once and for all puts my ill-fated romance with Brandi Fisher behind me. All because I had a principal who was just like her.

Freda Ogburn and Brandi Fisher are very much alike. They are both smart, very charming, committed, idealistic in their own way, and completely full of themselves. You don't achieve the way that Freda or Brandi achieve and be completely self-centered. The most self-centered members of the human race are frequently in jail or terrorists or gangsters or the prevailing despot in some sad country likely romanticizing their authoritarian ruler. Freda and Brandi are not despotic rulers, thankfully, because they would be the most intolerable despots, always wanting people to like them even as they ran roughshot over them.

Freda and Brandi are both relatively smart women with lots of charm who are too tied to what people think about them. I've always said this about Brandi. And the same is definitely true of Freda. They are smart, charming people - people better suited for politics - who are far too concerned with what people around them think about them. It is only with some distance from that that it is easier to see what a powerful and yet somewhat dangerous position that is for people. Bill Clinton very much had that quality. I've said in the past that Bill was the likely the best President of the 20th century. I don't know if that is true with some distance from my stronger identification as a liberal, but there is certainly a strong argument to be made, I think, that he had many of the qualities of a stronger quality President at the end of the 20th century that other Presidents have lacked. Clinton's remarkable intelligence and more genuine heart were his two strongest qualities, I think.

George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan each had qualities that were unique to them that I appreciated. Reagan's willingness to speak honestly and unequivocally about the need for Communism to give way to democratic norms was a very important quality he brought to the Presidency, as was his commitment to smaller government and a free market, even as he and Democratic Congress' repeatedly enlarged the government in all of their favored arenas. Knowing Reagan's charm and his level of intelligence, he likely too, among conservative Presidents, had this quality of being very sensitive to popular notions, good and bad, and sticking closely to popular winds. I would want to spend more time with studying Reagan to say that with more confidence.

But Freda and Brandi are most definitely of this ilk.

And I realize, after a year of it with Freda Ogburn, there is no way that I could have stayed in love with someone like that. Freda and Brandi are both very likeable. But, over time, I would become skeptical and disappointed with the tendency to use charm to keep pace with popular winds and constantly worrying about what others think about them rather than acting out of conscience. Bill and Hillary Clinton seem subject to this temptation, right now. It's a very disappointing spectacle to watch, frankly.

It was Freda's and my most serious disagreement. I believe and said that conscience should be our more serious guide. And Freda, reacting to and reflecting the political moment, which just so happens to be a liberal moment, argued that it was the law and not conscience which should guide us most seriously. And over the course of a year of that conversation it became much clearer to me just how Hitler was able to do all that he was able to do in Germany. Because people will get lost in the zeitgeist and inevitably confuse it with something more substantial.

It is an argument, of course. Just as Communism versus democracy was an argument, Nazism versus democracy was an argument, slavery as moral or immoral is an argument, and every single important moral question that we have faced is an argument. It is also an argument with serious consequences that seriously hurts and disrupts the lives of others for the sake of argument. It is the heart of serious wealth inequities, as political and economic zeitgeist's lead to people treating one another as pawns in a game of maximizing profits (even as real profits are maximized with more attention to the sounder fundamentals and integrity of businesses, meeting customer needs and satisfying customer desires, and using profits to reinvest and pay dividends to investors). It is an argument with serious consequences for our culture, as baser, more popular, more aggressive and less intellectually taxing insticts get rewarded in a culture that appeals to the lowest common denominator, as Mike Judge powerfully lampoons in Idiocracy. And it was an argument at the beginning of the 20th century which Nazis won for a period of time that allowed them to murder 6 million Jews and countless Europeans and Americans and other foes. And it was an argument during the course of the 20th century that Communists were winning in many countries which allowed them to murder and imprison millions of Soviet citizens and people all over the world in the name of revolution.

And the truth is that I could not live my life with someone who would perpetually rationalize the political moment for her own or her own ideology's gain and treat people like me like shit and sacrafice people like me in the process. I have given up on defending any ideology that rationalizes this way. And I could never live the rest of my life with someone who would perpetually rationalize their way through life, this way. I don't care how much money they make or how much political clout they achieve this way. It's meanspirited and its bullshit and there is no way in hell that I could stay in love with someone who operated this way. And I could never stay in love with someone who believed that she could find happiness in that kind of situation and without more accountability to more substantial integrity in life.

I like people like Brandi and Freda. But I don't respect that way of thinking. And I can't respect the cowardice in the choices that each of them have engaged during this period.

I need someone in my life with more courage. I've not met her yet. I don't know many women or men, for that matter, with the kind of courage that I've found in myself during this period. But I very much want to find that woman and learn from her and for her to learn from me and to develop a relationship of love that can last long past the initial romance.

I had that kind of love for Brandi. But like my love for poor people and public schools and modestly funded schools, in particular, it was blind. Blind love isn't mature love. And mature love is the kind of love that I want to have myself, my wife, my life, and for everyone, poor or not.

This period of my life has finally put Brandi behind me. Because I realize that as sweet and beautiful our little college romance was, the kind of love I'm looking for is one that can and will stand the tests of time, independent of my or her fortunes or fears. I want to love someone and be loved for real, in good times and in bad, with eyes wide open to our flaws as well as our strengths.

Freda and Brandi both have other important qualities in common. Their charm creates loyalty that can be a bit blind. And neither of them likes criticism.

I inspire loyalty. But I am happy to say that it is rarely blind. I actively solicit people's thinking about my flaws. Because I want to know about them. So I can address them. I'm sure I'm still blind to many of my own flaws. Aren't all of us. But I try to face them actively. So I can do a better job of addressing peoples' concerns.

But neither of those qualities are ones that can substitute for an acknowledgement of each of these woman's most important flaw: neither takes intelligent thought nor engagement nearly serious enough and both of them think sticking close with what others think is the right thing to do is some kind of substitute.

Both could be aggressive. Brandi was aggressive, though had no power over me in any serious way. Our aggression was between two equals, and we both gave as well as we took. Freda is the most aggressive boss/administrator I have ever dealt with, though I think largely because of a romanticized aggressive liberal political period that she, like so many liberals, are caught up in the zeitgeist around. She didn't start out that way. She started out like Brandi. Charming, sweet, supportive. But she grew more aggressive as my first full year unfolded. And it was one of the single-most miserable and counterproductive experiences of my life. And I have not once heard an apology for her behavior. And for that she and the liberals and aggressive teachers who egged her on can fuck off, as far as I am concerned.

I am finally over Brandi. And I have absolutely zero romantic attachment to schools in poor and middle class neighborhoods, anymore. Like Palestine, if you want progress in your schools and neighborhoods, then liberalize and build that progress. You want to muscle your way to progress, good fuckin' luck and you can do it without me.

And anyone who puts power or money or ambition or any of those things above being decent in the world could never ever be the person that I would want to work for nor spend a life with.

I need more substance than that. I need someone who impresses me because she knows how to have life that is ambitious and independent and thoughtful and not dependent on what others think of her. I need someone more like me, and someone who can nicely help me see when I'm full of shit when I need to see it. I need someone I can genuinely count on and not just someone who counts on the popular winds to guide her and me. I need someone who I can trust.

Love,
Ben

Bitter

I think this is the most bitter I've ever felt in my entire life.

I've been through a lot of shit in my life. But I don't know that I've ever felt this bitter. At least openly. It's the no win part of it that is killing me, right now.

I've got to get over this because this is no way to live.

This is why we forgive.

Love,
Ben

Dumb and arrogant

You know, an alternative to all of this writing I've done has occurred to me.

Maybe I'm just kind of dumb and arrogant.

All kinds of good reason for me to think so. I have been kind of stupid financially. I've been kind of arrogant in my youth, no matter which way you cut it. I don't seem to have any of the aspirations for money or power or prestige that other ambitious folks have. I'm constantly talking like I know more than I really do and then I learn something different the next day that changes the way I look at things. I can't seem to hold down a job. I'm constantly getting in trouble. I've been in trouble with the law more than I would like to admit. For someone who is politically-minded, I'm more open about my life than most people would find tolerable or that most political people would find safe. I'm a teacher, which no sane person would choose to be, and I'm a special ed teacher, to boot, which means that I spend most of my days with kids who don't particularly like school, much of the time, or, if they do, they aren't as interested in intellectual pursuits as I am. I'm a stupid fuckin' martyr is what I am.

So maybe I'm just kind of dumb and arrogant and not honest enough with myself about that. Plenty of good reason to think so. Better to acknowledge it, for me and for my kids, than to pretend otherwise.

I'll be thinking about that.

I entertain all alternatives. Or at least I pride myself that way. Maybe I'm just a hick and a dumbass with too much education. I could easily name a dozen people who would agree.

Maybe I've just been too arrogant to admit it.

One thing everyone agrees on: I talk too goddamn much.

Love,
Ben

Respect and skepticism for authority

It's so ironic.

I both have far more respect for the role of governing authority, generally, and more appreciation for the limitations of particular figures of authority, legal, political, and organized authority, generally, and more of a sense of my own independent thought, choices, and free will, than I had before I began my thinking and writing and teaching work.

I respect individuals. I also respect their strengths and their limitations, with more understanding, today, how their limitations and the limitations of a culture, generally, make it more or less vulnerable to making serious and too often tragic mistakes in the ways that people treat one another and the ways they use government to do so.

Winston Churchill is right. Democracy is not at all a perfect system. Because it reflects the limitations of those who lead it, vote in it, and make up its culture (a fact of liberal democratic existence that liberal democratic people need to better account for in their thinking and behaving in their politics and their dealings with one another). Democracy is the least worst form of governance. What would make it better is a much more humble appreciation for its power and the limitations of those who advocate for it, vote for it, and wield it.

I no longer have any political heroes that I trust without serious appreciation for both their weaknesses and their limitations, and the single most important limitation of liberal democratic countries being the propensity of its people and political leaders to turn to power to solve problems, many of which it could not possible solve and many times power makes far worse for its use.

My respect for the role of authority in our lives has definitely improved over my adulthood. Someone has to make decisions around self-defense, defend us and establish and maintain security. Someone has to make sure that people who murder and rape and commit the most violent offenses are contained while they learn to take responsibility for their behavior and until they can be trusted to not hurt people in the future. Someone has to make the important decisions that affect our lives, especially those that leave us freedom and room to make them ourselves. Someone has to decide how freedoms should be preserved and justice done. Someone has to be responsible for churches and schools and universities and all of the places where we learn our most important values. Someone must do this work to make the strongest liberal democratic life possible available to all of us.

The irony is that while my attitude about these things has changed, my trust for authority figures has also waned. I am more skeptical of authority - any and all authority - than I was when I was younger. I see better its limitations and the limitations of individual authority figures. I am more aware of the self-righteous and polarizing tendencies of those who seek power, and the ways this undermines a more genuine, honest, broad-minded, empirical, and decent vision of the world, and how that undermines their capacity to make wiser judgments. I am more aware of the small-minded and futile tendency by so many to turn to authority to solve problems many of which it doesn't understand enough to solve. I am more aware of how arrogant those with authority and power can be, including myself, assuming that they can or should solve more problems than they actually can or should with their authority and power.

I am more aware of just how arrogant we all are, these days. I see better the limitations of myself and others to solve problems that they don't really have genuine solutions for because they haven't figured them out, as of yet.

And I have much, much more respect for those who engage in the rigorous and difficult task of trying to figure out solutions to our most serious problems, not just out of civic duty but out of a decent sense of self-interest that solutions to problems should be real and sustainable and not just popular in the moment.

That is what I respect about serious thought most. I respect that it looks beyond the immediate moment and looks to a time when popular notions of expended themselves because they have failed, sufficiently, to persuade those who use them to look to better solutions.

It is tragic that so many of the failures in humanity's history involve death, imprisonment, unnecessary pain and poor treatment, and inequitable and unfair treatment of so many people. It is more tragic that we so often fail or wait so long to finally take responsibility for this treatment of people.

But the hope of liberal democratic societies, especially, and of humanity, generally, is that it eventually gets these things figured out. Because we have failed substantially enough to lead us to reevaluate our path and reconsider our direction and our choices.

Sadly, as an empirical fact, we have always have freedom. Free will, after all, is the basis for moral responsibility and the foundation for every faith, religion, and moral, legal, and political institution that we have originated. The tragic part of that fact is that we have, so often, abused that freedom and used our own freedom to limit that of others, often to validate some form or another of some self-righteous notion of how the world should be, even if the merits of the debate warrant more appreciation for our freer and responsible thought to resolve many issues. It does not, always, which is what makes us so skeptical that it might. And yet there is no substitute for that thought, no matter how much we might look elsewhere. It really doesn't matter how much we try to substitute force for thought. It just could never ever replace it, because force cannot think through a solution like thought can.

And I am much more skeptical for the ability of authority and authority figures to solve more problems than they are actually capable of solving, anymore. And I am quite convinced that many uses of force make those problems far worse, ironically and tragically.

And yet we invest our confidence in it, here at the beginning of the 21st century, even as it fails us. Because facing that failure leaves us vulnerable to a notion that I suppose scares us or that we just can't bring ourselves to believe: that our existences are either won or lost by our thoughts, our consciences, our commitments, our efforts, our courage, our love and respect for one another, and our capacity to use those to solve our problems more effectively. Nothing else will save us. And anything else that might doom us is subject to solution only insofar as our thoughts and consciences and commitments and efforts and courage and love and respect and capacity for problem solving bring those solutions into our lives.

Maybe that scares us. Maybe we just haven't thought about it long enough to realize this. Maybe we've just created our own trap by making one another too nervous or scared to have discussions that might think our way out of our present problems that more fear and threats and sanctions will certainly not solve. Maybe we just foolishly believe that all that force and aggression really always has made the difference. Maybe, as Mike Judge lampoons, we are just too stupid or cowardly to face our limitations in this and most arenas.

I don't know, is the truth. Maybe it's all of these things. Maybe it's our failure to appreciate any of them enough. Maybe it's our pride that we don't need such wisdom, and that all we really need is a strong hand and a clear set of rules. It's the same pride that has animated humanity far longer than historians have kept track of that history.

And this question, this question of the role of authority, has problably plagued us more than any other question that we faced in that long, long history.

We do seem to get it more wrong than right most of that time. And yet we persisently pride ourselves as getting it more right than we ever really have. That is true both in terms of governance of one another and in terms of each person governing himself or herself. We peristently rationalize and romanticize that we have governed ourselves and one another far more effectively and decently and respectfully and without harm than we really have.

And the reason why I respect historians and social and political scientists and other students of human history and nature is that they are, generally, the most honest assessors of humanity's more honest and genuine history and nature.

There isn't a consensus among historians and social and political scientists that authority should be approached with skepticism for no reason. It is the clear and abiding consensus because authority so frequently fails us. And we so frequently fail our leaders and our values, including respect for the law and the purposes of the law and our own aspirations with the law and with one another that it is the saddest irony of history that we perpetually come back to an affirmation of the infallibility of our use of authority that ultimately undermines respect for its use.

It's the strangest and most paradoxical fact of human history and existence, I think. And, yet, it is so. Political polarization and efforts at forced religious, political, and legal conversion inevitably are the lightning storm that remove the ground for authority, end in failure and the slow unravelling and entropy of authority's credibility and result in a rethinking of our cultural values. Our ground is found in our solid relationships between people and our better ideas for how our most important problems can be resolved. And power can sometimes serve those efforts. But its use beyond its limitations cannot sustain our confidence because it so clearly fails to resolve the problems we want it to resolve. Many people profess a belief in God or religion to provide divine intervention into their problems. But they generally look for God or religion to be solutions they often cannot be, as a matter of empirical fact, rather than questioning whether they are right or wrong about that fact. Power works similarly. Wealth also works similarly. And yet, no matter how much these paths fail to offer solutions that people want, they still seek them, because the central mistake or distortion continues to fail them. Greed does not sustain wealth, and yet people are tempted by it because they become convinced that it does or that it might. And, similarly, power does not sustain the values of a culture, and yet people give into that temptation regularly as a fuction of their fears rather than as a function of their more genuine faith.

My respect and skepticism for authority, I suppose, must derive from a respect for the institutions and the individuals that are responsible for it despite my skepticism for this flaw and so many mistakes of judgment that individuals, institutions, and even cultures are subject to in the course of humany history. The idea that freedom and liberal values can be replaced by force as the guiding principle that animates human socieities and liberal democratic societies, in particular, is a very sad and serious mistake indeed, and our most serious failure of conscience, during this political moment and over the entire course of human history. It is the mistake by humanity that has needlessly cost the most lives, oppressed the most people and repressed the most freedoms, created the most cynical realities of human life, and is responsible for the most unnecessary tragedy that the world has ever witnessed.

It's captivation of our hearts and minds wanes. Slowly. Too slowly. And yet it wanes.

Because there is no replacement for more genuine and committed thought to solving problems. Everything else is fiction and fantasy.

And no culture could survive long whose penchant for fiction and fantasy ignored the patent reality that our most important human endeavors and institutions are founded and sustained ultimately on thought, and with aggression and force subject to that thought and the wisest engagement of that thought.

How much wiser and less tragic would we be if so many more of us took such thought more seriously. We would all be wiser and better served by that world, even if we would not all be equal on every matter of merit, but where we could all benefit from the varied and diverse merits of one another. We would all benefit where a world of merit rather than a world of politics and power held sway in the world. And God knows we would have much better quality lives as a consequence.

That is the life I seek. I can only hope that I can find it or see the way toward creating it.

Love,
Ben

Bullying

I am slowly, very, very slowly (I wish it would go faster, but there are limits to everything, I am learning), working on forgiving the bullying that I faced with my administrators and colleagues here at Eisenhower. My colleagues I forgave a long time ago, since their bullying gave way to better (not ideal, but better) behavior. My administrators, on the other hand, bullied me, slowed me down, and then cut me loose when their bullying had yielded counterproductive results - not to mention really treating me badly - and took no responsibility. Ever. I've never heard an apology. And I don't expect to. It's too popular and easy to escape responsibility for bullying, these days. I am responsible for being slow on the uptake with my work and getting my head and heart wrapped around my responsibilities this year, and learning how to be more freely committed to my work. But my heart is working on letting go of all of the bullying that I have faced in the meantime.

For whatever reasons, largely because I cared about them and about living in a world where there were less bullies, I chose to work with kids many of whom, on one hand, seriously struggle with school and all of the abilities that it takes to get good at school and all of the professional responsibilities that this preparation offers people. On the other hand, I work with a lot of kids with very serious behavior issues. Generally these kids are the same kids as those with more serious academic struggles. Some of my kids are bullies. But I care about them, anyway, generally far more genuinely than any of my colleagues.

So I chose to work with bullies.

But that doesn't make bullying ok. Ever. And certainly doesn't make it ok to come from the people who have authority and responsibility.

I will forgive my administrators. It will take time.

I have been in good faith with them, generally, the entire time I've worked with them and generally honest. I have not been completely honest always (for reasons I think have been understandable) but I have been in good faith always. They have been in good faith insofar as they have believed that the bullying did some good. It did not. It undermined me. I said so. They ignored me and bullied me more. And I will forgive that fact soon enough, I'm sure. I don't want this shit on my heart for any more of a length of time as I have to have it there.

But I have to say that now and for the entirety of my life, as someone who grew up among rougher folks, in rougher neighborhoods, with a rougher family than usual, probably, and who works with some of the roughest kids that teachers encounter: I hate bullying. I hate it with a passion unparalleled by likely anything I can feel that kind of feeling for something in my life. I hate bullying for bad reasons. And I hate bullying for good reasons. Of course bullying for good reasons, is understandable. It is also corrupting insofar as it makes us arrogant with power. And it makes for a very cynical world that I am ready to see put behind liberal democratic and not-so-liberal-democratic societies.

Bullying, in its broadest sense, is the most profound scurge of the world that humanity has witnessed in its history. It is responsible, in one form or another, for the ugliest and most deeply disturbing crimes against humanity committed by people upon one another. It is genocide, repression, authoritarianism, political imprisonment, patriarchy, racial oppression, discrimination and repression based on religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and every other form of repression and oppression known to humanity. Bullying is the basis by which all other repression and ugliness occurs.

And, right now, we are rationalizing it as the philosophy of governance best suited to the liberal democratic world, after a century of challenging it as the best means of governing humanity and putting behind us a century of bullying and force as the central organizing principle of Soviet, Nazi, Communist, Fascist, theocratic, despotic, and all other forms of the worlds most serious ills of the 20th century.

Too far, so many cynics rationalize. The problem with Naziism was not that it was an ugly, corrupt philosophy of people and governing that built on genocide, imperialism, and all of the worst human impulses. The problem was that the Nazis went too far. The problem with Communism was not that it is was built on a philosophy hostile to humanity's freedom and built on the premise that enslaving, imprisoning, and murdering people for the ends of equity was preferable to allowing people to freely settle their own affairs, including affairs of equity, freely. The problem was that Communists went too far. Had they only stayed within the confines of moderate hostility to people who were judged inferior or unworthy or had they only stayed within the confines of the moderate hostility to people and their freedom, then they would have been more civilized. I'm quite sure that many moderates of this era and past eras have thought such ugly things. I've know people who have done so openly with me.

The problem with those philosophies is that they bullied too far, too much for their ends, people reason.

Not that the bullying is wrong. But that those particular bullies were wrong.

And hence the rationalization of all of the worst behavior in liberal democratic and not-so-liberal-democratic countries at the beginning of the 21st century.

I hate bullying. All of it. I understand that people with authority often inadvertantly bully. I do, I know, often because I am supporting colleagues who are bullying when it is unnecessary and, often, an incursion into a legitimate freedom for a kid to exercise. But I back teachers up, generally, both because they often have reasonable enough requests, and because I want to be backed up too, when I really do need someone. Also, often, because I have been pressured to do so by administrators. And often enough because I am so used to a bad habit.

When I think about it, I've given as well as I've taken on this one. I've been bullied by colleagues and administrators. And I've bullied kids, as all of us have and as all teachers do. Often and generally for reasons that are completely understandable. But, like I said, it doesn't make it feel any better when it happens.

And that is how Naziism succeeded for a time, sadly. Because the Nazis were smart enough to know that is they could capture legal authority, they could impose all sorts of ugliness and the German population would, often and generally, feel compelled to carry it out. Some people had more courage and challenged, circumvented, blunted, covertly disobeyed, and otherwise found ways to stop some of the ugliness of Naziism. Many, if not most, others complied.

And that is what a compliant society that sacrafices liberal democratic values to a governing philosophy built on force and compliance looks like.

And I cannot think of anything sadder than the idea that this is where the growth of liberal democratic countries and values would be stunted at the beginning of the 21st century. With the notion that this kind of force and compliance, bullying for every political cause, is the fulfillment of our most cherished liberal values. It makes no sense at all. But worse it undermines all of our most serious and important cultural values. It is most definitely not the most honest way to engage. And it undermines more honest engagement because it silences critics and those who might express problems or reservations with its consequences in their lives. It is all of the problems with more repressive regimes, just less pronounced in less repressive liberal democratic regimes.

And I hate bullies of ever stripe and always have, long before I started studying policy and governance more formally. Bullying is not about honest engagement or reasoning. It is getting what we want. At the societal level, it is a forced consensus that must, if we are honest, give way to a more genuine means of engaging one another. It does much damage. And does not nearly the good that it presumes. By the logic of the current period, the repression of every government that has ever existed could likely be rationalized. As long as we have good intentions and a good goal in mind, then we can legislate, pressure, force, and bully as we will to get whatever ends we wish. Laws against adultery, homosexuality, pornography, alcohol, gambling, usery and all of the like were all based on similar premises. And they have all done much harm to individuals and to humanity, generally. And I am tired of this kind of reasoning dominating me and the rest of the liberal democratic and the not-so-liberal democratic world.

I am tired of the bullying. I hate bullying. I love the bullies. All of them. Including Kim Jong Il (though I have to admit that I wouldn't cry if he encountered a tragic fate) and all of his ilk. But I hate the bullying. I hate it with a passion. And that hate for bullying will never go away, no matter who is doing the bullying or for what cause.

That makes me human, I hope. It doesn't make any of us weak. It makes us decent.

And decent is what I want to remain. So I have no use for rationalizing something less than decent so I can have things I want.

What I want is a world where we treat each other decently. That's what I want. More than anything else. And I want to see it as much as possible before I die.

But, right now, I just want to forgive this bullying I've encountered this year.

And I don't ever want to face it again.

And if someone asks me what my most important lesson was my first year at Eisenhower, it will be:

I will never ever let people treat or bully me like that ever again.

Love,
Ben

Pride

The most serious sin of power is pride. It is a self-validating notion that everything I believe is true because I believe it to be so, it derives from an infallible source, or because it could not be otherwise (my favorite form of pride is Christians and religious people who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge any contradiction in the Bible or their religious texts, thereby rationalizing the worst that humanity has to offer as much as the best).

And that is the sin of power. And the reason why democracy and separation of powers and checks and balances and federalism and decentralization and elaborated and unelaborated freedoms and rights that create the space for them and all other forms of checks on power and devolution of power are so important for those who care about more honest liberal values, and, more to the point, more honesty and honest wisdom given more serious attention in our human experience and cultural values.

That is why Caleb Carr's rationalization that creating an American democratic government is less important than abolishing slavery is such a serious mistake of judgment. Because it ignores the much more serious problem for humanity, at that time and for all time: the corruption that comes with the pride that power is being used wisely by whomever wields it.

That pride has consequence. And the biggest consequence is a legacy that cannot sustain itself and which loses power and real influence over time. And, more importantly, yields resentment that makes it a relic to be shunned in the future. Hopefully, it yields forgiveness, too. Hopefully for all of us, that is.

Love,
Ben

A clarification about my administrators at Eisenhower

I've lamented much the problems I've had with how my administrators have tried to resolve important and difficult issues that we've faced with curriculum, discipline, and paperwork issues here at Eisenhower.

I do want to point out that I think my administrators are good people. They are very good people. They are not perfect. They have made many mistakes, I think, which are really pretty plain if and when they will be honest with themselves about them. But they are good people making those mistakes largely in good faith, I think. I have made many, many mistakes as a teacher at Eisenhower (as I would expect and hope I and everyone - including my administrators - would, if I or they are going to learn anything). There is no other learning than when we are making mistakes. Anything else is rationalizing to ourselves and others about our choices, always pretending that they are better than they really are. It is being on defense about our choices rather than honestly reflecting on them. And that is the problem with the use of force in achieving goals. It puts people on the defensive in a way that has them constantly rationalizing their choices, good or bad, rather than honestly reflecting on choices and taking responsibility for mistakes.

My administrators face this kind of pressure and force, just as I do. From their bosses in the district; from Congress, the state legislature, and the school board; from parents and advocates who threaten and often follow through with formal complaints, lawsuits and other punitive measures; from the press, which can threaten aggressive means of highlighting problems to try to force solutions through shaming and other forms of coercion, and social pressures from their friends, families, churches, the media, and other sources.

They face pressure. And, like me, they are responsible for their choices in the meantime (though everyone must be cut slack in an environment where their choices and freedom are limited by constant threat and presence of force; that is the purpose of all of that force and pressure, after all).

My administrators are good people doing their best job, right now. It is not always the best job that could be done, potentially. But it is the best job that they know how to do at this point in their careers and lives. I have much confidence that they are in good faith. And, in so many ways, they are very competent at what they do. My principal is the most intelligent person in the building, other than me, and she is likely the most responsible (though the kind of responsibility I've been demonstrating is a something different than I think she is used to demonstrating or dealing with; responsibility to one's conscience is not the most common or popular way to operate, sometimes, and she has, to her credit, been wrestling with her conscience as I wrestle with mine).

The assistant principal for my team of teachers I have more confidence in as a matter of giving people and kids space to both be themselves and make mistakes. She is not as ambitious as either of my other assistant principals, I do not gather. But she is committed to kids in some very profound ways. The final administrator in the building and my other assistant principal is more ambitious, in many ways, but less capable, I think, than either of her colleagues. She prides herself as the tough administrator. But it is that pride that undermines the more genuine development of her abilities, I think. She is a good woman who is very competent in many important ways. I have a lot to learn from her in terms of organization skills and her knowledge of the inner workings of the Kansas City, Kansas and general school bureaucracy. But, sadly, she has not aspired for a stronger standard for her work. Namely, she does not care about kids or people as genuinely as her colleagues. It is a standard that she needs to aspire to if she is going to be a stronger administrator. She could pride herself otherwise. But pride is not real ability.

I care about and even feel a profound sense of respect and love for all of my administrators.

I have been frustrated with what I am clear were very important mistakes they made, this year, in supporting (or not supporting, as the case may be), and, at times, undermining my efforts to be as strong a teacher as I can be, this year, and the efforts of all of the teachers in the building to be as strong as they can be and for students to be as strong as they can be.

But I also respect and appreciate all of them and all of the many very serious and important strengths that they bring to their efforts here at Eisenhower.

Anyway, I just felt like I should say something about how much I really do respect and appreciate my administrators and all of my colleagues, really, even as I have had differences and frustrations with how to handle best a million different issues with teaching and learning from kids.

We all have lots to learn. Me, especially. And it can and always could turn out that I'm wrong about everything I've thought up until this point and that there is more wisdom to be gleemed that I am seeing, at this point. I'm sure there is, actually. For all of us.

Love,
Ben

A clarification of principles of least possible necessary aggression

I just wanted to clarify something around principles of least possible necessary aggression that has concerned me ever since I started working with/on these principles. And that is around the propensity to rationalize any principle of governance to leverage for maximum force and aggression.

At least one of the reasons that power corrupts is that both more legitimate authority figures and those who use authority more wisely and less legitimate authority figures, power-players, and those who seek to use and abuse authority less wisely are constantly either leveraging for maximum possible use of force or being manipulated to do so or to move in a direction that is more in this direction.

In some ways, this may be or seem inescapable. The most important means of escaping this rationalization is to have a culture committed to as much freedom as possible, save those limited areas of governance that need more serious limits on freedom. The idea that there might be limits is not taken well by those who will rationalize their own freedom to limit the freedom of others as much as they would like, which is exactly why democratic institutions were developed: to check the power of those various groups and forces which might limit freedoms when such limitations serve the interests of some at the expense of a minority or individuals or other groups. James Madison's warning against factions is a wise one in Federalist Paper #10, not only because of the collection of interests to limit the freedoms and work against the interests of others or the common good for their own interests, but because it demonstrates the self-centeredness with which so much politics is engaged, including by political representatives, and the degree of skepticism that every citizen or individual should bring to limitations on their liberties, efforts to impose on their interests to serve the interests of others, and responsible engagement that is necessary that looks after common interests and common good to prevent such encroachments.

But no matter how much wise observers warn of this propensity to limit freedom for more narrow interests, including the narrow interest in limiting freedom for what is presumably peoples' own good without giving them final say over such matters - what many observers call the nanny-state propensity of government and what George Orwell more bluntly called Big Brother - people will now and likely into perpetuity try to limit freedom as far as they can and to use as much force and aggression as they can get away with to preserve self-righteous notions of the way the world should be (even if their use of force and aggression often makes that world they are critical of more likely than if they used less or no force or aggression; the alcohol prohibition is one such example of the use of force and aggression that made the world of alcohol, alcoholism, and the underground crime scene they became associated with far worse for the use of legislation and force rather than better).

So I want to clarify something.

The term least possible necessary aggression is not a tool of negotation. It is an objective reference to the amount of force that should always be presumed when force is needed and valuable. It is a flexible but objective ideal that will often and regularly not be met, I am sure. But it is an ideal that should guide our efforts to constantly be seeking out methods that respect freedom of individual conscience and judgment most and hurt others as least as is possible and only as is necessary.

It is a term of limitation, not a term of elastic negotiation so those who would cynically use it to squeeze as much justification for as much force as they would like or as much force or aggression out of those they have carry out their power grabs can manipulate this term as those same cynics and power-mongers and power-players persistently use terms like liberal, conservative, democratic, constitutional, moral, force, freedom, war and many other terms and who are persistently talking about the world in aggressive terms - aggressive efforts instead of vigorous efforts, attacks instead of criticism, offensive and defensive rather than engaged and a substantive discussion of issues and disagreement and many other ways that the press, in particular, feeds the much too aggressive and not nearly thoughtful enough instincts of political players and citizens' ideas about politics - and every term they can get their persistently intellectually dishonest and inconsistent hands on to justify as much force as they want to exercise at any particular moment.

I probably do it, as well, as a teacher and when I exercise authority. It's a propensity of authority and power that I am persistently keeping an eye out for and which I spend much time reflecting on and which I will use much time reflecting on this summer to reevaluate how I have used force and aggression to accomplish tasks I want accomplished. I likely fail and use more power and force than is necessary. And I will spend the rest of my life learning how to be as consistent as humanly possible with these principles.

Because the truth is that noone else has consistent principles that they use for matters of freedom and force that does much more than rationalize all of those place where they want to use force and as much force as they want to accomplish their ends, which generally undermines more responsible behavior, often unintentionally, counterproductively, and counterintuitively but nonetheless, in my study and experience.

Least possible necessary aggression does not need to be one more in a perpetual line of principles that is rationalized by various aggressors to use as much aggression as they see fit without genuine concern and attention to the purpose of these terms: to reduce aggression as much as honestly possible, not what is rationalized by the current, if often dismal reality. The Soviets or Nazis, for instance, could very easily cloak their ugly and power-corrupted behavior behind principles like least possible necessary aggression by persistently claiming that the amount of force they use is the least possible and necessary even if it very plainly is not. Propaganda has the advantage of not taking the truth seriously, and big lies and small lies, alike, are the tools of its trade which is exactly why a more honest, intelligent, scholarly and open marketplace of honest ideas and discussion is needed to be the only genuine reality check for this kind of manipulative use of words, ideas, arguments, images, and power that we have available to us. Worse, the propaganda of good people manipulating for what they believe or perceive or want to believe are good ends is subject to the same kinds of lying, big and small, distortions of perception and honest engagement, failure to more honestly engage those who disagree, failure to be responsible and genuinely accountable (meaning when someone holds themselves accountable; external accountability, by its nature, is not the most genuine form of accountability) to intellectually honest arguments and disagreement, can be more persuasive when people engaging that discussion believe they are doing so for good cause. Sometimes lying is very plainly for a good cause, as when Germans lie to hide Jews during the Holocaust to avoid the capture of Jews and the reach of Nuremberg law or when slaves or abolitionists lie to escape capture to avoid being held captive and the reach of federal, state, and local fugitive slave laws. But often lying for good causes becomes a dishonest habit of mind and engagement that both distorts the discussion and debate and makes honest engagement and judgments very difficult. It is this propensity that undermines efforts to have and nurture a more honest, reasonable and reason-respecting, decent, trustworthy, and otherwise better functioning liberal democratic society and all sorts of cultures, groups, organizations, familes, and other places where people need to function well together.

Least possible necessary aggression means what it says. The least possible necessary aggression is the only amount that should be used for any purpose that genuinely needs aggression or force, because no other means are either available, usable, or possible.

No aggression and force, at all, is always the least aggression and force that should be preferred. And all aggression should be genuinely accountable to that standard as much as is possible.

But liberal democratic people clearly need flexibility with the use of aggression and force. They need as much as they need and no more. They will take more. I can almost guarantee that. And the only genuine form of accountability for that fact is when people internalize the principle and the commitment to respecting people, their freedom, self-determination and self-governance as a matter of honest commitment rather than as a matter of external pressure, force, image-management or other forms of less honest means of being committed to principle.

People who are committed to being good people as a matter of fear or because of the threat or presence of force are not being good or moral or honest or decent honestly. They are doing so for reasons other than a genuine commitment to being good or moral or honest or decent.

Least possible necessary aggression works the same way. People who are less likely and willing to be good or moral or honest or decent honestly and not because of the threat or presence of external pressure or force, including myself when I am less honest with myself and others, are not likely to be committed to any principle, nevertheless some abstract principle of governance.

Our propensity to get more honest will only happen as we get more committed to honest embrace of this and any principle without fear of the threat or presence of force or aggression to make us internalize the principle. Everything else is just less honest, is the truth. People who reason as a matter out of external force and aggression are generally more self-righteous - in the literal, objective sense, meaning more likely to try to self-validate than to honestly consider alternatives including the likelihood that one is wrong - and just not very honest with themselves or others about their more honest motivations.

There is no magic way to make that problem go away. It will only wear away as force and aggression wear away as principles that are persistently used and abused for whatever causes people see fit. Like every other important matter that has ever faced liberal democratic peoples, this problem of power and its propensity to be abused, manipulated, and otherwise rationalized will be dealt with as we get more honest about it and as our consciences grow more genuinely aware and willing to face the problem.

One alternative is that someone will demonstrate to me why my arguments are wrong and why some other way of thinking about force or aggression should be preferred. I've not seen convincing arguments to the contrary. But I am open to such arguments.

In the meantime, everyone should be skeptical of the arguments of everyone who proposes to know best how to use force and aggression, including me and my arguments.

The tough part is that force and aggression are a natural and regular part of our lives while we are considering those ideas and arguments and squaring our consciences and thoughts with more realistic and genuinely ideal conceptions of how force and aggression should be used.

Meaning, we're going to make a lot of mistakes, no matter what we do. Not just around this principle, but around every principle we operate from in our lives. That alone should humble our sense that we should be out working to take everyone down for what we believe to be their mistakes. And that really is the rub and often the tragedy of it all. Too many people want freedom largely around their ability to take away the freedom of others. It is those mistakes which they perpetually rationalize that propensity to limit always-too-small sphere of freedom that individuals enjoy in a liberal democracy. Interdependence is an important and irrevocable part of modern, liberal democratic life. But genuine interdependence must genuinely respect genuine independence before it can become more genuinely interdependent. And that is an inescapable reality of modern, liberal democratic life, as well, whether the proponents of force to solve every problem want to face that reality or not.

That was the final undoing of both the Nazi and Soviet regimes. Nazis underestimated the need for independence and the commitment to free and democratic principles that liberal democratic peoples brought to their relationship with the Nazi regime and World War II. And the Soviets underestimated just how serious that same commitment was felt by both its satellite states and its own citizens, despite so many irrational impulses they all often brought to Soviet politics to the contrary.

The proponents of force, pressure, and aggression as a general governing philosophy are similarly underestimating the seriousness of the commitment to freedom and independence that free peoples will and do bring to this question currently. Free peoples can be cowered by a show of force for a time. But they always find the courage to fight, work, think, write, protest, and otherwise demonstrate that serious commitment to their freedom and independence.

And the most liberal democratic values and principles always will out in the end because they are the strongest values that humanity has yet developed.

And the brilliant thing about liberal democratic values is that insofar as they are lacking in their capacity to understand and deal with the challenges to those values that they regularly face, they have as a fundamental principle that gives the freedom and responsibility to those who would elaborate, expand, and otherwise improve upon those values and principles and understandings.

That principle cannot be accomplished by force. It can only be accomplished by freedom of responsible, engaged thought. And such responsible, engaged thought cannot take place in an environment where force is the primary philosophy of governance. So it must take place in the hearts, minds, and thoughts of those who care about those values more than do those who would otherwise cripple that capacity.

Someone will rationalize least possible necessary aggression to achieve ends that have nothing to do with an honest appreciation for these principles, I almost guarantee it.

And the only antidote to such abuse is for people who are more genuinely committed to liberal democratic values and the freedom that it is predicated upon to engage it honestly and to argue the more genuine case. Abuse of force can sometimes be checked with modest uses of force. And often, as with Al-Queda, for instance, where there is very little that seems negotiable or reconciliable in their ideology, much more substantial force is necessary to defend against attack.

I also happen to hold the now unpopular view that a war may have been the needed action to liberate Iraqis. The question for me was how to avoid the problems of Vietnam and a foreign army liberating an indigenous population that may identify more with its oppressors than with its liberators. I opposed the war, up front, because I thought this issue was far too serious to ignore and to not discuss and debate, up front, how a war in Iraq might be engaged to avoid the problems of Vietnam. I think collaborating with Iraqi opposition groups and their alligned militias, allowing them to lead an effort that we would back with overwhelming force and working closely with local, indigenous groups of Iraqis could have helped us undercut this insurgency, politically, where all of its political and, thus, military oxygen is derived. Without political support the insurgents have very little to fight for and very little psychological and material support for their efforts (the same would be true in Palestine if the Palestinian people would find the courage to give up their support of terrorist groups that clearly and objectively undermine their cause, their security, their culture, their economy and their day-to-day lives if they would find the courage to face that fact, that their support for terrorists is the single most important cause of the misery in Palestine, despite the admittedly miserable conditions also created by Israeli occupation). A more open-minded, open-hearted, open-ended debate and discussion about this war, up front, might have elicited ideas like this to avoid the problems we have experienced. I'm sure that there are many other very good ideas that thoughtful folks might have offered. But they never got much of a chance, is my point, because people got into a mad dash for action rather than taking thought and engaged differences and discussion more seriously.

Ultimately, all matters of the mind and heart are won or lost in and by minds and hearts, not by force. Force is a temporary fail-safe. It is not a sustainable means of persuading hearts and minds more honestly. And it is only that persuasion that can possibly sustain a genuine commitment to the principles and ideas that liberal democratic peoples or even peoples with less experience with liberal democratic values, like the Iraqi or Palestinian and all peoples, take seriously.

Love,
Ben

Independence

I have three posts about the debate in Iraq about withdrawal of American troops, wealth inequities, and middle school teaching and management that I've started but not finished because I'm trying to get schoolwork done. I'll post them as soon as I have some free time to finish them.

In the meantime, I want to say something about my experiences here at Eisenhower and at KU.

This period of my life has taught me one thing more than anything else:

I no longer trust any one group, ideological, class-based, which side of the tracks they are on, or otherwise, inherently for any reason at all, anymore. I look at individuals much more closely, these days.

And in the future, my sole and most important criteria for how I want to work, where I want to work, who I want to work with is who will respect my freedom and independence most. Knowing that this may not happen in any group of people in my lifetime, I want as much independence from all groups of people, as much as is possible.

I now and always have plenty to learn to make me better at whatever I do and to have that kind of independence. But I no longer want to ever be dependent on any group of people as long as I live. I don't trust groups, generally, anymore, unless they respect my freedom and independence. And I don't care what they call themselves or what cause they are alligned with anymore.

When I think about it, this makes it worth it to have my life turned upside-down the way it has been in the last 5-6 years (since Brandi and I broke up and since I left grad school).

Because I do not want to spend my life with anyone who can't respect my independence and conscience more seriously than that.

Contrary to Caleb Carr's assertion in the first What If? series that America would have been better served under British rule, outlawing slavery earlier in its history and avoiding a bloody war in the process, the American Revolution was not, primarily, about slavery or taxation or representation or preserving fortunes.

The American Revolution was about independence. It was about freedom and democracy. And the liberal values and institutions that freedom and democracy made possible to flourish were more important than any other issue that American faced.

That is my feeling for my own life. My efforts, right now, are not, primarily, about ideology or politics or any particular issue. They are, primarily, about independence and the liberal values from which all other decent things bloom.

And I don't give a shit, anymore, about any particular group who I may affilliate with, anymore, except insofar as they respect those liberal values and independence and freedom. I don't trust anyone to look after me better than me ever again.

Love,
Ben

I am so tired of this bullshit clogging up the political dialogue

Richard Perle writes this bitter, recriminatory piece for the Washington Post today that epitomizes everything that is fucking up American politics today.

How the CIA failed America

I have to say that I am beyond tired of this shit. Perle spends an entire column pillorying George Tenet for a comment he made about a comment he argues Richard Perle made about what rationale was responsible for the run-up to the Iraq War.

I am beyond tired of this shit. And, more importantly, I am beyond tired acting like it accomplishes a goddamn thing.

Perle and Tenet, both, are doing exactly what you would expect from a recriminatory, aggressively investigative, and whether they want to admit it or not, a bitter and cynical Washington culture that is a fucking cancer on the body of American culture.

Why do we continue to mindlessly engage in this kind of bullshit like its actually accomplishing something?

Does constantly going over what wasn't done leading up to 9/11, what stupid arguments got made or lies were told leading up the Iraq War, what mindless strong-arming and brow-beating that took place 40 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and even today...

Does any of this really accomplish a goddamn thing?

No, is the short answer. The long answer is that it is all meant to cover up and pretend that such behavior is less bitter, recriminatory, vengeful, thoughtless and otherwise ignoble than it really is.

It's not just thoughtless and ignoble. It's this massive, insane, persistently denying and deflecting waste of time. It is all this aggressive posturing and these aggressive take-downs, threats, and otherwise ugly, nasty behavior that leads to all of the lying, the blame-shifting, the avoidance of responsibility, the denial, the pretending like things are going better than they are, the cover-your-ass mentality, the everyone-keeping-their-mouths-shut-for-fear-that-they-are-next mentality, the cowardice, and this long-running hope that if everyone just sticks to script on this one then all those problems will go away or that everything will just go back to way things were in the past which is always imagined and dreamed up as somehow more hunky-dorry than it really was or is.

I am so fucking tired of all of this bullshit. I am most tired of all of the really fucked up consequences following this bullshit and everyone saying, "Yep, things are going good" or "Things can't get better than this" or "This is what progress looks like" or "Nothing we can do about things today, because they just aren't the way they used to be" or every other fucking excuse that people have for why their bad behavior has so fucked shit up, in Washington and in everyday life.

There are consequences for bad behavior, including and especially pretending like recrimination and bitterness and cynicism and rash and petty "action" really are the noble means of dealing with life and that forgiveness, decency, constructive vision and engagement, room for conscience and discussion and disagreement, thought and making mistakes and learning really are just the bane of civilization that has held us back all these years because people who allow for it just keep undermining the otherwise brilliant methods of the more recriminatory among us.

Fucking drives me crazy.

Recrimination is bad behavior. I don't care how you cut this one. People who maintain recrimination and bitterness as virtues are rationalizing, creepy people who need to face up to their bitterness and ugliness and stop pretending like it is better than it is.

This is not just Richard Perle or George Tenet or Elliot Spitzer or Robert Byrd. It is the whole goddamn bunch of political folks in Washington and around the country, save for some much more decent and good-hearted folks like Bill Bradley and Dick Lugar. I don't agree with Bill and Dick on everything. But, down-deep, they are more decent people than so many of the cynics and the vengeful, recriminatory pricks who are constantly fucking up Washington and politics, generally, in this country.

I am tired of this shit. I am tired of it masquerading as something better than it really is. I am tired of people treating it like it is better than it really is. I am tired of it constantly fucking up relationships between folks and trust in government. I am tired of it constantly holding sway.

And most of all, I am tired of it pretending to be progress for the last fucking 7 years.

It is bullshit, is what it is. It is ugliness pretending to be pretty. It is pettiness and bitterness pretending to be better than it really is.

It is all of us rationalizing our small, petty, ugly, indecent instincts and pretending like they are better than they really are.

9/11 and the War in Iraq are done deals. This whole godforesaken political period is a done deal (that really is the most cynical part about it, since many of these people, right and left, I read and watched rationalize this fact as a part of their lead up to this period. They knew that more forgiving folks would have to forgive them for their bullshit. And they did it anyway, to take advantage of and manipulate their more decent, forgiving, good-hearted ways. Because they're manipulative fucking pricks is why. But manipulation isn't leadership. So eventually people will see through this bullshit. Until they do, I will call bullshit on it every fucking chance I get).

9/11 and the invastion of Iraq are done. They are behind us. What is ahead of us is the opportunity to constructively avoid more of the same bullshit. What is ahead of us is the opportunity to think and discuss and debate and disagree and reasonably and realistically consider what we might do next to avoid these kind of tragedies and to make the best of the situation in Iraq so that we can make sure that as little tragedy as possible takes place and so that opportunity can be found even amidst danger, as John F. Kennedy used to say.

I am so fucking tired of this bullshit clogging up the political dialogue. I am tired of us pretending like it is better than it is. I am tired of us pretending like we are better than we are when we are engaged in it. And I am tired of people pretending like this is the only goddamn option when it is perfectly fucking clear to those same people that there clearly is a better, more decent, more good-hearted and noble way forward; they just keep refusing to take it because it's harder than being a prick and there is nothing they hate more than taking the harder, more thoughtful, more decent route.

I am tired of this shit clogging up efforts in schools like the one I teach in. I am tired of this shit getting so much political traction in Washington and around the country and around the world. I am tired of this shit being treated like it is moral and noble when it could not be farther from either of these things. The ways that this stuff is rationalized in the name of Islam, Communism, and all sorts of despotism really is the worst ways in which this ignobility and corruption of spirit are most clearly confused with real deal morality and nobility that it makes my stomach turn.

It makes my stomach turn that people would confuse it here at the beginning of the 21st century after we spent an entire century earlier turning back all this nonsense in Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere where people got so stuck in it they couldn't, and wouldn't, just face up to what a nasty, terribly, inhumane, indecent, and ultimately stupid, foolish, and destructive way it was to lead a country or humanity. It makes my stomach turn that people could pretend and pretend and pretend that they are more decent and good and thoughtful than they really are and that people will just keep eating that shit up and being taken in like fish on a line just because they can't face up to their own ugliness or their own gullibility.

I am tired of this shit festering and being nurtured among the cynical realities of a world too cowardly to face up to its cynicism or its cowardice.

I am tired of people looking at all of this bullshit and saying, "Well, there's nothing we can do."

I am tired of living with and being subject to all of this cowardice and lying and bitterness and nasty human behavior and everyone saying, "This is how it is supposed to be."

This is not how it is supposed to be. Where is all the fucking progress? Where is it? In Nancy Pelosi becoming the first female House Speaker? Give me a fucking break. In the firing of all those attorneys from the White House? Or the firing of Richard Clarke? Or the firing of all these conservatives? What the hell kind of progress is that? In the outcasting of Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds from Baseball's Hall of Fame? What kind of bullshit is that?

This is not progress. I don't care how much you lie about it. I don't care how much you try to manipulate it.

What is progress is people like me calling bullshit on it rather than cheerleading it and acting like it is somehow better than it is.

This is repression and regression, pure and simple. This is the repressive amongst us looking to make all the bad stuff go away by punishing it, hurting it, pushing it down and our own repressive instincts creating a regressive reality that we are responsible for whether anyone will take responsibility for that fact or not. This is humanity regressing to its lowest common impulses. This is not humanity embracing its base instincts. This is humanity pretending they don't have them and all the while resolving to beat the shit out of the ones they see and acting out on their basest impulses while calling them something more noble than they are.

This is human ugliness is what it is. And it is all the rage these days. And it is getting play in Washington, in the press (which is where the really corrupting power is at, these days) on television, on the radio, in the music industry, in the movie industry, in schools, in churches, in families (sadly).

This is human ugliness pretending to be something better than it really is.

And it is really, really, really old, at this point. It is really old to watch this bullshit constantly disrupt and fuck up more decent engagement with one another because people just can't let go of the bullshit.

If you can't let go of the bullshit, shut the fuck up, sit down and get out of the way of people who will be more decent than you. And work on being more decent. But stop pretending like your bitter, recriminatory impulses are something better than they really are. And stop stomping all over people around you who are trying to make things genuinely better.

I am tired of this bullshit clogging up the political dialogue. And I am tired of it clogging up my life. I am tired of this bullshit dominating dialogue rather than the real deal, thoughtful, decent, deeply considered, engaged, open-minded, open-ended, give-and-take, freedom-respecting, conscience-respecting, forgiving, loving, good-hearted discussion and thought and debate in the world.

I am tired of all of the ugliness dominating the good.

And I am tired of all of us looking at it and saying, "Yep. That's the way things are supposed to be."

I am going home. And finding some sanctuary from all this ugliness.

Love,
Ben

Needing something better

I've been feeling shitty all day, today. Feeling taken advantage of, used, and otherwise shit upon.

I've realized since visiting other schools that the school I work at is really shitty. I'd never let my own kids go here, is the truth. Not with how it is run, currently. This is a school of last resort. That's why I wanted to work here, because I have a genuine commitment to kids who are more often left behind that no law could ever mandate that teachers or anyone else have.

But I'd never let my kids go here, is the truth, as long as it was run the way that it is. Meaning, as long as kids and the job is treated like a neverending burden rather than a responsibility freely taken up.

Today, it feels like a burden. In a serious way. If I felt like this every day, I would hope that I would leave this job or any job, especially one where you are working with people or children, and go find something better.

But many people don't. And many, many teachers and administrators teach and work in my school feeling the way I do today most of their time in schools. That is a sad fact of life.

I have an assistant principal who epitomizes this fact more anyone else I know. She clearly doesn't like her job, most days. She clearly doesn't seem to like life much, most days, is the truth. And she doesn't say or do much that inspires much respect for her, except that she keeps slogging it away in a job that most people wouldn't want. Someone needs to want her job because someone probably needs to replace her. She just isn't that good an administrator, and I don't suspect that she was that good of a teacher. She just climbed the ladder with ambition that outweighs her abilities. It's the saddest thing to see happen anywhere, especially in positions of authority. But I imagine it happens all of the time. She was largely responsible for my dismissal, I suspect. And she has been a miserable administrator to work with most of the time.

And I cannot wait for my 6 additional days in this job to be up more than anything else because I do not want to feel like this in any job for any period of time and hopefully never (a guy can always wish). And one of the more important things I've learned in my life is that I would never want to grow up to live the miserable life that this assistant principal leads, who doesn't seem to like people, at all, much of the time, including herself.

I am making plans for how I can have a much happier life, largely. A job where I get hassled least and constructively challenged most and independent wealth are both routes that I will be working on developing. I just can't ever see myself, again, living a life that is subject to the whims and groupthink and popular impulses of a persistently feverish, inconsistent, and often intellectually dishonest mob of whatever folks I happen to settle down my career and life with.

I want a life of independence. I want to spend my life with people who have something constructive and decent and thoughtful to contribute to it. I want to never again or a little as I can possibly encounter be under the thumb of anyone, especially someone who doesn't think as much as I do. But I really don't want to be under the thumb of anyone, is the truth.

I don't want to ever deal with a situation like this, again, and wonder, "How did my life get turned upside down? And who are these people condescending me?"

But, most of all, I just don't want to feel like this all the time. How I'm feeling today. I don't want to feel like this, at all, is the truth. And I will do anything I can to make that a reality in my life as much as possible for the rest of my natural born life.

I used to love school and respect authority, generally. I respect people of all stripes. And I follow authority, generally. But I don't respect authority figures because of their authority, anymore. If you have something deep and significant to contribute to my life, then I respect you. If you don't, and especially if you think that authority is some kind of substitute for that, I pity you, is the truth. Because your life is so bankrupt that you don't even know the unique thrill of studying or learning or teaching or sharing insight into those deeper truths of life.

I got an email from my advisor/professor from grad school the other day. And I remembered why I loved professors so much. Not because they were perfect. They're not. But because they are, often, the least arbitrary and the most thoughtful of the people I have dealt with in life, generally.

But maybe it's just mostly because they live in community where ideas and deep thought is taken seriously, even if they don't always have their heads completely wrapped around those thoughts or ideas or even if some of them are boorish and rude and overbearing just like so many people outside of a university.

At least they care about something that matters.

And I need to get back to that life, as much as possible. And perhaps I need some level of independence even from that life.

But anything would be better than how shitty I feel right now, frankly.

Here's to hoping there is something out there that might fit the bill. I really need it.

Love,
Ben

The beauty of freedom

I am discovering in my 5 years since leaving school the risks and pitfalls of freedom, but more importantly I am learning the possibilities, real world lessons and experiences, and beauty of freedom.

Do you know what the best part of freedom is? That no matter what choices you make - good or bad - they are your own.

And 5 years of more substantial freedom since leaving grad school has done for me exactly what I wanted from it (and more, really).

It has put my life squarely in my hands.

And you want to know the best part?

For all of the scares and concerns that people have had for me and for the world where more freedom was available, I have far more confidence in my abilities, today, to have the life that I will love - a life of teaching and writing, a life of financial security and wealth, a life of helping others and being an example of self-discipline and responsibility and contribution, a life with freedom and free time to be with people I love, especially family and friends, and a life where I can be the kind of example that my children and others can learn from and then improve on my example as much as they are able and with as much potential as is humanly possible - with all that freedom, including all of the trial and error. Lately, I've experienced a lot of both trial and error, but that is where the learning takes place and it is where living a life without a safety net - until I build a more substantial one for myself, that is, than I could ever depend on government or a family member or a job or anyone other than myself to possibly create for me - becomes so worth living.

This experience, more than any other I've had, has made my life more genuinely secure upon my efforts and intellect and habits for a more genuinely secure future than I ever could have found in a job pension, a government check, or the hopes for an inheritance or a lottery payoff.

It also is the single most important learning experience of my life, I'm convinced. And this kind of life, I'm convinced, even though it is just beginning in a meaningful and self-directed adult way, is exactly the general sort of life that most people would benefit from were they to think beyond their immediate gratification, their fears for their financial future, or their perpetual efforts to fit in with the crowd. As Benjamin Graham, the successful investor and investment teacher who Warren Buffet most credits with his wealth and who he says influenced him most besides his father, argues accurately, I trust, it is not what others think about a stock, and I would argue about politics or parenting or teaching or science or life or anything. It is the facts and the analysis. And the kind of intelligence that can take advantage of those facts and analysis is the kind that is as free and independent as possible. That is why freedom, and intelligent use of that freedom, is the single most important factor in overall life success among the most successful people in the broad array of fields of which I have kept track.

My fortune is not made yet. Neither is my career as a policy theorist, writer, teacher, citizen, political participant, and school, university, and community leader (perhaps I will run for some office at some point; it's not my main ambition, in the least, but I'm open to the idea if the opportunity looks right). I have no family. Or wife. I don't even have a girlfriend, presently.

But I do have a thoughtful, realisitic vision for my life and for the world, generally, and a patient commitment to see it realized and for the ideas to be left behind that can realize it if and as people make better choices. And I have the confidence that only freedom and responsibility can offer a person.

Any person. Without freedom and responsibility, we are all slaves. As Bill Buckley argues, the greater degree to which we are taxed or have our freedom limited, the greater our slavery is.

And, for all our fears, it is ironic that only with freedom comes the only real confidence and security that we can ever really know that our lives are on solid ground.

And that is the beauty of freedom.

I have to try to sleep if I can. Enjoy the cool spring evening, if you happen to be lucky enough to have one like ours.

Love,
Ben

Focussing on my weaknesses

I'm really sad.

I can't seem to get anything right, these days.

Everyone I encounter seems to look at me through my weaknesses. I can't ever seem to be appreciated for my strengths, anymore.

I don't know if it's good guys finishing last or the fate of a strong and independent mind or people assuming I must not be tough enough or hard enough or imposing enough or rules-adhering enough or if I'm just an ordinary joe-schmoe having life not work out, sometimes, like anyone else.

I've decided that I'm going to spend the next few months giving very careful attention to my major areas of weakness around organization, financial issues, legal/rules issues, appearance, and anything else I can think of. I give all of these issues considerable attention. But not as much as some people.

The bottom line for me is that I don't want my ideas to given short shrift ever again for any reason whatsover. I don't want my mind to be overlooked ever again for any excuse that people can find. And I don't want my heart to be an excuse for anyone to ever take me for granted ever again.

The woman and people I'm looking to spend most time with, I'm sure, will not have these problems with taking such strengths for granted, I can only hope, since I can only hope that my strengths will be as important to them as they are to me.

But I don't want anyone ever again to have an excuse ever again to take me for granted. I want to beat all other relevant expectations so soundly that I'll never have to experience this feeling with people ever again.

I am tired of being an exotic oddity with people and to have them focus on weaknesses that, for them, are strengths, all because they don't appreciate, well enough, the significance of intelligent thought in their own work.

It's important whether people recognize that or not. It may not be the most important thing on a basketball court (although it's important there, too). But most other places, it is more important than anything else because it is the resource from which every other problem is resolved.

And my job, now, is to make that so abundantly clear that that fact can never ever again be avoided by anyone I ever work or spend time with again in my life.

Anyone who fucks me over with good intentions only gets credit for their good intentions from here on out, and anything, honestly, that they might have contributed. But I don't romanticize Brandi or KU or Eisenhower, anymore. I love what I do. And I love people, generally. But I don't romanticize them anymore. I want to fall in love. But I want to fall in love with someone on her merits. I want to do and work somewhere I love. But I want to work and do what I love based on its merits. I always want to be paid and promoted and honored and appreciated for what I love. But I want to be paid and promoted and honored and appreciated based on my merits.

I'm on a mission to make so crystal clear my merits that noone will ever be able to credibly say boo about them, again, except to help me and others improve and only have credible criticisms in those situations where they are right. And my efforts will be to anticipate those criticisms as often and as thoroughly as I can as much as I am humanly possible. And when people do have criticisms that say that I can't play on the team ever again, they better have a good argument.

I just hope I never develop dementia. Because I will be hell to deal with if I do:).

Love,
Ben

I can't live like this

I can't be someone who fucks over others to look after my own ass. My conscience won't let me. After this week, I find myself asking, "Who would you be becoming if you became a dick just to join the crowd?"

I'm just tired of being pushed around and eating shit. I can't be that kind of person, is the truth. I'm a decent person and no amount of bullying can really ever make that go away.

I just want to have a life, again, where I can be decent and have that be appreciated and not always have me as a target for what it means to be too nice.

Love,
Ben

My life really fuckin' sucks right now

Can I just say that my life really fuckin' sucks, right now?

The problem is that I don't trust anyone else, either. It's everyone dick for himself, these days. And I'm learning that as much as I'm frustrated with myself, these days, there is noone else I can trust but myself.

The one good thing I have going for me, right now, I think, is that I am as determined as hell to beat the shit out of any competitor I come across anymore. I am tired of getting shit on. I am determined to win at all costs, at this point. And I have no loyalty to anyone anymore.

I do wonder who I am becoming, these days. I also know that I don't trust anyone anymore. This life of pressure and leverage and force is every man for himself. And in a world like that, I only want to come out on top. If people become willing to face up to that legacy, then perhaps I will give up my more aggressive stance. Until they do, my new resolution is that if the world is one of survival of the fittest and who has the most leverage and power, then I will do everything in my power to outleverage every son-of-a-bitch I encounter.

Aren't you proud of the progressive world we have created? Hooray for progress, huh? It's just kind of overwhelming how much better it has made everything, isn't it? Economic slowdown. Mild stagflation, says the Economist. No resolution in sight for a reasonable, thoughtful Iraq policy. Not to mention an education policy that is full of good intentions and unintended consequences.

But the liberals and conservatives I read and talk with don't seem to be, generally, open to rethinking this road.

So I guess I'm thinking it is time to get into a position to strongarm others rather than be strongarmed all of the time. I don't want to ever lose a political or otherwise arm-wrestling match ever again. And if I do, I want to make the lives of the people who beat me to be the most miserable fucking existences they ever could have imagined in their worst nightmares.

I guess this is how power corrupts, huh? I guess that's how politics gets so cynical, huh?

Well if giving into the cynicism is the price of not getting fucked again, I'm diving right the fuck in and I'm not coming out until I have the strongest arm around.

This is what progress looks like. Congratulations to the progressives of all stripes, liberal and conservative, who made this happen.

Love,
Ben

Seeing my most serious blindspots

Randomly, today, I was reading about Warren Buffet, his investment strategy - called value investing - and my roommate passed me his biography.

And I saw two of my most serious blindspots, today.

Buffet is a much more conservative investor/risk-taker than I am used to being in my life. He prefers the simple, he likes to know his limitations, and he looks for enduring value (which is the essence of value investing).

Two quotations in Andrew Kilpatrick's book about Buffet, Of Permanent Value, sums up the lessons I learned today:

"Summing of Ben Graham's teachings (Ben Graham is the business professor whose teachings are the basis for Warren Buffet's investment philosophy): 'When proper temperament joins with proper intellectual framework, then you get rational behavior.' (Forbes, October 19, 1993).

And, "It's just not necessary to do extraordinary things to produce extraordinary results."

Warren's wisdom in investing and life helped highlight my two strongest weaknesses or blindspots, I think.

The first, and the one that's gotten me into trouble so often, is that while I have plenty of intelligence, I have a temperament from hell. I am passionate, but far too passionate. I am easily upset. Far too easily. I have discovered how to have more genuine control over that tendency by letting it loose enough that the temptation soon gives way to a more authentic self-discipline. It's been a good strategy, often. But as I see it, I understand why I shoot myself in the foot with this one far too often. Often when I want to be working, I cannot concentrate because I am overwhelmed with some strong feeling. I am learning more honest self-control as I see the mistake and internalize the lesson. But it has caused me a lot of problems, in the meantime.

The second and more important blindspot, I think, is that I prefer the complex to the simple far too often. It leaves me blind to the simple answers and the simple habits and truthes that show a clearer way if I will only pay attention. When I want an answer I go complex, even when, often I should look for something simpler. Buffet is an example of someone who knows how to navigate the complex world of investment with an appreciation for the simpler truthes in life. Instead of just choosing the simpler, more straightforward option, I prefer the complex, even when it gets me in trouble.

Both of these are examples of strengths that have metastasized because I have overdone them. Passion is great, but an even-keel is often what I need. And intelligence is useful, but complexity can often become overwrought. Often what I am missing is a simple appreciation for the more moderate and simpler habits and truths that make for a happier and more productive life.

Warren Buffet is brilliant, by the way, if you have not studied his strategies. If I was going to be an investor, this is who I would study. Not a bad idea, given that he is the richest investor in the world. But more importantly, because he's such a decent guy.

And, today, he helped me see important blindspots I've been missing in my quest for a life of freedom with responsibility.

Love,
Ben

Humbled

This is hands-down the most brilliant writing that I have read about the Iraq War, from military historian Frederick Kagan.

Congress and Iraq

Friends, Enemies, and Spoilers

Fighting to Win

And brilliant analysis of the tactics of the surge from another favorite military historian, John Keegan.

How will it work?

I am humbled, to say the least.

Love,
Ben

Cutting through the bullshit

Iraqi national Hoshyar Zebari pleads in today's lead Washington Post column:

Don't Abandon Us

Something that really cuts through all the bullshit.

Love,
Ben

Learning not to trust anyone but myself

I have learned a really important lesson after this experience at Eisenhower.

I don't trust anyone but myself, anymore. I don't expect loyalty or to be treated well by anyone except, perhaps, my spouse. I look after myself and have no interest in looking after others except insofar as it is a mutally supportive relationship.

I just don't trust anyone anymore.

I think that could be different. But not the way people are behaving, right now. And I have no interest, anymore, of putting myself in anyone else's hands, anymore, except for my own.

I completely understand why my Aunt Connie left teaching (an inner city school, no less) now. And why so many quality teachers leave the inner city for better pay and better school districts.

Because the truth is that helping others carries a significant burden, even for the most idealistic. It involves being bullied by do-gooders and by less noble folks, alike, who whine persistently about the poor state of their schools and their communities and, all the while, are often responsible for that poor state. I want no part of that, anymore, if people aren't willing to critically analyze their situation and engage in anything other than the aggressive, less thoughtful approaches which have gotten them in trouble in the first place. You want a dysfunctional community, I say, by all means. It's all yours. I just don't want to hear your whining when you refuse to change the very things that create your situation. It is very much like Palestine. If you want a better life, you will have to renounce the aggressive ways that have created your situation. If you refuse, you live with the consequences.

I have no interest in sacraficing myself for such causes anymore.

My future is completely open, at this point. I would like to teach and write, but I'm not wedded to it, at this point. My one, single, important criteria for my life is that I want a career and a life that I can feel good about and feel happy doing and perhaps contribute something to others. I have no interest in being a martyr anymore. And I have no interest in being bullied for the rest of my life, anymore. So anything that involves as little of that kind of treatment as possible.

But I feel no loyalty, anymore, to the cause of wealth inequities or inner city schools or poverty work as long as everyone involved refuses to face up to the very kind of self-centered, aggressive behavior that creates those conditions.

I don't trust anyone but myself anymore.

I know we can give up the more self-centered behavior that gets us into this mess. I also know that we will refuse as long as we refuse to face up to what shitheads we are.

All I know is that I won't be supporting shitheads, anymore, no matter what flavor they come in. And I know, at this point, that I can only trust myself while we pretend like this path is more noble than it is.

By the way: Notice how bullying renders you completely irrelevant to the people you bully? Yeah, and the crazy thing is that you didn't do any damn good.

And, at this point, I don't really give a shit either way about people who do this with me.

Or their causes.

Love,
Ben

Taking responsibility

I'm a little underwhelmed by this sad little political period and with myself.

The truth is that my organization is a mess. I've improved significantly and I'm on a steep and ambitious learning curve. But I still stink. I've worked very, very hard at it and I am getting things, slowly, under control. I'm frustrated with the slow pace. But I've dealt with this problem for most of my university life - 12 years - which were the bulk of my young adulthood. So the fact that I'm making as quick of progress on this, at this point, is a big deal for me.

But so many of the more aggressive ways that people dealt with me and this issue - many of which were outgrowths of a period of far too much stress, pressure, aggression, and fear on everyone's parts (each of those issues are highly corellated) - so completely and clearly undermined me and the development of my organizational and teaching and other abilities, as they have my entire life. I've said so to coaches. They've ignored me. I've said so to professors. They've ignored me. I've said so to bosses. They've ignored me. As a teacher and an authority figure I see better, now, why people in authority ignore those they have authority over. Because they grow calloused and arrogant about all of the responsibility they carry and all of the terrible ways that they get treated in the course of carrying out that authority.

And I don't care, anymore. As a rule, at this point, I don't trust people with authority and only turn to them when I have no other choice. My commitment, at this point in my life, is to keep them out of my life and my work, as much as possible, unless I trust that they are there to genuinely help. Too often, as a rule, that is not the case. So I will stay clear of them as much as possible as a rule, from here on out, until that changes.

And that's where humanity is stuck, right now. We keep treating each other shitty. So we pass it around. And pass it around. And pass it around. And pass it around. Or we don't, and we hold it inside until we let it loose on someone within our path. Sometimes it means losing our tempers. Cho Seung-Hui and Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold gave up hope and let loose on several of their classmates. And we pass it around. And we pass it around. And we pass it around. And we pass it around. And we don't learn our lesson. And we don't learn our lesson. And we don't learn our lesson. And we don't learn our lesson.

And the biggest lesson of all that we don't learn from is that all that aggression undermines our ability to learn the lesson.

Why in the hell do liberal democratic peoples think that all that growth and development in humanity's history happens as we lessen our aggressive ways towards one another and create more freedom for people? Why in the hell do liberal peoples think that every most signficant advance in the path of liberal societies has involved treating someone better? Why in the hell do we think that all of our most important advances have involved putting behind us a more forceful, more aggressive, more repressive, more inequitable periods in our histories?

And then we spend the rest of our sad, miserable, cynical little existences hoping that we're not too decent, not too nice, not too generous or forgiving. Not too good.

The truth is that all of our fears make us assholes. And we're bigger assholes, as Jesus used to say, because we spend all our time pointing fingers at one another talking about what an asshole the next guy is and how our shit smells like roses, all so we never have to admit our failures and fuck-ups.

The truth, in my little corner of it, is that I've been a miserable teacher this year. I've been exhausted and overwhelmed by all of the paperwork and all of the aggressive attitudes from teachers and kids and parents and everyone that have all gotten glorified this year. I've been constantly emotionally drained by all of the bullying and the unrealistic expectations and the pushing and the otherwise shitty behavior that I've encountered from all kinds of people during this time. My organizational and time management abilities have always needed serious work - work that I have done and that I'm really proud of, at this point; I am really getting on top of priorities that have long been a much more serious struggle - but my ability to improve them has been persistently undermined by all of the bullying and more aggressive encounters I've had with people. It's really very seriously undermined both my teaching and my capacity to improve my capacities all year. I've got much work to do in that capacity. But my and I'm sure everyone's abilities have likely taken a hit because of it all. That's fine with me because it both reinforces for me how shitty that way of doing things is and it has definitely weakened my commitment to folks who behave in this way, no matter who they are.

And that is why people give up on one another and turn to any number of escapes or pursuits or destruction towards themselves or others to fill the space in their hearts that all of that aggression they experience creates.

And noone wants to admit the mistake. And noone wants to admit the mistake. And noone wants to admit the mistake. And noonne wants to admit the mistake. And we pass it around and pass it around and pass it around and pass it around. And noone wants to admit the mistake and noone wants to admit the mistake and noone wants to admit the mistake. And we pass it around and we pass it around and we pass it around.

There are only two pathes out of this.

Either we begin to cut it out.

Or we stay stuck.

Each choice will have consequence.

And we will all be stuck with those consequences until we face up.

It's either pass it around, pass it around, pass it around, pass it around.

Or it's beginning to cut it out.

That's it. That is the fundamental choice for humanity's road forward. That is where the only genuine progress lies.

Everything else is manipulative and self-centered and dishonest.

Either we will have the courage to admit that.

Or we will stay stuck and stagnate.

What we are doing, right now, I think, is growing. Very, very slowly. Very, very slowly we are facing this much more fundamental question for humanity.

All because we can't and won't be honest with one another. All because we are scared of the consequences. So we scare each other with consequences. So we are less honest. So we grow less quickly. And on and on and on until we face up to this ugly legacy.

You know why I'm so confident that we'll overcome this foolishness? Because there is no other way out. Everything else is a bluff and bullshit. Even the proponents of its alternatives know this. They've just just gotten too used to the bluff and the bullshit. But they know it's bluff and bullshit. When they're honest with themselves. Though that may be all too rarely.

And that is the question that humanity has to answer before it more genuinely begins to move forward: when are we going to get more honest with ourselves and one another?

It's ironic isn't it? How rarely people take responsibility in the era of accountability?

It makes total sense to me. Because the aggressive and forceful ways that we've approached accountability, these days, completely encourages us to withhold taking responsibility, and the forgiveness that goes with it. And we pass it on and we pass it on and we pass it on and we pass it on. And noone admits the mistake and noone admits the mistake and noone admits the mistake and noone admits the mistake. And we pass it on and we pass it on and we pass it on and we pass it on.

And the saddest thing of all is that we pass it on to the very children and young people who we say that we do it all for. And then when they grow up and they feel good about life and look forward to life and treat people better than we do, we look on them with suspicion and say, "You know why you're so fuckin' happy? Because you don't know the real world yet." The real world that we created and pretend is all going so much better than it really is. And we look at those same young people and we say, "You're so sweet because you're so naive."

All because we can't bring ourselves to face ourselves and do the one thing that we lecture them to do their whole lives:

To take responsibility.

And we pass it on and we pass it on and pass it on. And we don't admit the mistake and we don't admit the mistake and we don't admit the mistake and we don't admit the mistake.

Hitler carried on like that. Until he lost the war, that is. The Soviets did too. Until they fell apart.

And now we face the same choice. Do we listen to our consciences and admit the mistake? Or do we fail to admit the mistake and keep passing it on?

It is the choice that all of humanity faces. Every generation. Every lifetime. It is the choice that each person faces in their lifetime. Do I listen to my conscience, to my better angels? Or do I stubbornly refuse to face the mistake?

Jesus was right. It is easier to see this mistake in others before we see it in ourselves. And choosing to acknowledge that mistake is the fundamental choice that we face in our lifetimes.

May we choose wisely.

Love,
Ben