![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I just got home from work, after coding the debate and some post-debate analysis on two channels. As with the others, I was not able to see all of it. Stylistic points at the end, I want to address one thing George Bush talked about that offended me on a really deep level.
Bush was asked what he would say to someone who had just lost their job, and Bush told them he'd help them out, by getting them an education, by getting them into a community college so they could find a new job.
Dear Mr. President:
I have a BA from a good university. And this doesn't make me elite. In fact, approximately 20% of individuals now attend college, and that number is rising, rapidly. In fact, that's something you advocate -- more higher education.
So why don't you tell me, how enrolling at a community college would have helped me get a job the two times I was unemployed thanks to the economic downturn we've suffered during your administration? I'd really like to know.
You talk about how we must become a nation of knowledge workers. I have knowledge, and I'm willing to get more. But community college isn't enoug for me, and it won't help me get a job.
And here's another thing, it won't help displaced factory workers get jobs either, as long as too many community colleges are merely replacement programs for the learning that didn't happen in our public high schools and as long as job creation in there very sectors we've been told we simply must rely on in the new world just isn't happening.
When you offered your solution for the unemployed tonight, you insulted a lot of people. You told people both with and without college educations that what they know isn't good enough. You devalued their achievements and aspirations and offered meaningless non-solutions. I've worked hard for everything I have, and I know the rest is mostly luck, and not up to you or me. But common sense, good advice, and a government policy that at least recognizes the nature and variety of its citizens without insulting them would go a long way to staving off despiar, and that's all we're asking for. And yes, that's how bad it is.
America is many things. Thanks to you it is in economic and emotional decline, and it is also lonely.
I am, quite frankly, more disgusted than I know how to express. And look, I haven't even touched on how my education means your party villifies me as a the "cultural elite" while you stand there and try to pat people on the head and mislead them on the value of the educational programs this government supports. It's incomprehensible. Do you want people to give up?
When did being American require that we avoid the exceptional pursuit of our intellect, our skills and our possibilities, both as individuals and as a nation made of individuals?
America has long been a scary place, although in different ways, at different times. But when the British and Eurpoeans first came here, it was a hostile and foreign land they weren't terribly equipped to deal with, and yet they chose to explore it and tame it and while that wasn't always done in a way that was right, successful or logical, it was done, and that was extraordinary. So why is it, that now, when America is again a frightening and strange land to us -- because of terrorism, because of the economy, because of the viciousness of our current political divides, you would have us hunker down in ignorance and fear? What on earth could you be thinking?
I can deal with my leaders being out of touch with ordinary people -- it is an unfortunate reality of much leadership in general and American politics in particular, but to be out of touch with the very idea of America, as you so clearly are, both puzzles and offends me.
*
Now, onto other things:
- George Bush, manic in a scary way for the first third of the debate. Like really freaking me out.
- Kerry -- don't plead
- Flu shot question -- aside from looing like a deer in the headlights, Bush got nearly all of the facts of the situation wrong (I'd coded an article on it easlier that day), it would take me paragraphs to explain, but in short the US didn't know what was up, and the answer to the problem isn't "blame Britain" as Britain did nothing wrong.
- Can we stop it with this L-word crap. And now the K-word. It's stupid. Both using them as slurs and then not really saying them. If we must avoid words (which I think is stupid and dangerous) can we leave that to the N-word and the F-word? See how stupid this is?
Bush was asked what he would say to someone who had just lost their job, and Bush told them he'd help them out, by getting them an education, by getting them into a community college so they could find a new job.
Dear Mr. President:
I have a BA from a good university. And this doesn't make me elite. In fact, approximately 20% of individuals now attend college, and that number is rising, rapidly. In fact, that's something you advocate -- more higher education.
So why don't you tell me, how enrolling at a community college would have helped me get a job the two times I was unemployed thanks to the economic downturn we've suffered during your administration? I'd really like to know.
You talk about how we must become a nation of knowledge workers. I have knowledge, and I'm willing to get more. But community college isn't enoug for me, and it won't help me get a job.
And here's another thing, it won't help displaced factory workers get jobs either, as long as too many community colleges are merely replacement programs for the learning that didn't happen in our public high schools and as long as job creation in there very sectors we've been told we simply must rely on in the new world just isn't happening.
When you offered your solution for the unemployed tonight, you insulted a lot of people. You told people both with and without college educations that what they know isn't good enough. You devalued their achievements and aspirations and offered meaningless non-solutions. I've worked hard for everything I have, and I know the rest is mostly luck, and not up to you or me. But common sense, good advice, and a government policy that at least recognizes the nature and variety of its citizens without insulting them would go a long way to staving off despiar, and that's all we're asking for. And yes, that's how bad it is.
America is many things. Thanks to you it is in economic and emotional decline, and it is also lonely.
I am, quite frankly, more disgusted than I know how to express. And look, I haven't even touched on how my education means your party villifies me as a the "cultural elite" while you stand there and try to pat people on the head and mislead them on the value of the educational programs this government supports. It's incomprehensible. Do you want people to give up?
When did being American require that we avoid the exceptional pursuit of our intellect, our skills and our possibilities, both as individuals and as a nation made of individuals?
America has long been a scary place, although in different ways, at different times. But when the British and Eurpoeans first came here, it was a hostile and foreign land they weren't terribly equipped to deal with, and yet they chose to explore it and tame it and while that wasn't always done in a way that was right, successful or logical, it was done, and that was extraordinary. So why is it, that now, when America is again a frightening and strange land to us -- because of terrorism, because of the economy, because of the viciousness of our current political divides, you would have us hunker down in ignorance and fear? What on earth could you be thinking?
I can deal with my leaders being out of touch with ordinary people -- it is an unfortunate reality of much leadership in general and American politics in particular, but to be out of touch with the very idea of America, as you so clearly are, both puzzles and offends me.
*
Now, onto other things:
- George Bush, manic in a scary way for the first third of the debate. Like really freaking me out.
- Kerry -- don't plead
- Flu shot question -- aside from looing like a deer in the headlights, Bush got nearly all of the facts of the situation wrong (I'd coded an article on it easlier that day), it would take me paragraphs to explain, but in short the US didn't know what was up, and the answer to the problem isn't "blame Britain" as Britain did nothing wrong.
- Can we stop it with this L-word crap. And now the K-word. It's stupid. Both using them as slurs and then not really saying them. If we must avoid words (which I think is stupid and dangerous) can we leave that to the N-word and the F-word? See how stupid this is?
