Untapped Youth

Fayetteville politics brings me down.  National politics are bringing me down.  "Liar!"  It is not surprising that Washington has changed.  Covid changed America.  If you look back at the Trump presidency compared to now, things were familiar.  Gas prices dropped during the Trump presidency.  They averaged $2.00 a gallon, but there was racism, discrimination, extremism, and mass shootings were common, Economically America was functioning in a way similar to our past.  Perhaps this was because Donald Trump cares strongly about revenue.  We didn't watch television and feel fear or antagonism.  Murder among ourselves was not the norm.  Since Joe Biden won and defied a calculated attempted coup and determination to stop the verification by Congress of the Electoral College, things have not been the same.  That rowdy, almost criminal, far right extreme faction responsible for this coup attempt still is alive and well, and many now are working in Washington.  It is unprecedented, but it is not surprising.  American history is sprinkled with watershed events which discard the past and forge a new ideology.  Rock 'n' Roll, a rowdy, sexually evocative, rebellious popular music usurped the ballroom-oriented swing dance music of the World War ll era.  Interestingly the Jitterbug and Lindy Hop originating in the Jazz Age are more physically demanding than the Watusi, the Go Go, and the Shag, but ballroom dancing, although romantic and physically expressive, had manners.  Congress before Joe Biden had manners.  That's the difference.  During America's Sexual Revolution, when "The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test" condoned dropping acid and riding a school bus across the country, certain outdated norms were dismantled.  This was an important time, when the sensibilities of America grew up.  There was the War in Viet Nam.  It is an era about which we remember little, or is it?  Women's Liberation.  Bra burning.  Penis envy.  Group sex.  We all ready have been through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.  But now.  What is this?  I have been contemplating teaching school again, although North Carolina and Cumberland Country in particular have lost 35% of their teachers.  Why, and could I overcome these obstacles and attempt to provide a solid and artistic musical education for students here?  My gut reaction always has been  a resounding, "No," but I was not sure why.  This afternoon when I ate dinner at the Hibachi Grill, it became clear.  The people around me were the types of people for whom I would teach their children.  It is a mystery to me.  Many of the people in Cumberland County are military, and I don't associate them with the ghetto.  When I listen to these people converse, I am at a loss to understand whence their dialect comes.  The children do not talk like their parents.  Instead they talk like ghetto rats using the slang that is popular where?  "Oh, on the internet"  On television.  In video games.  In pop culture.  From where else could it come?  It is language that pretends to be more "in the know" than reality, and certainly post Covid the internet or television no longer are realistic.  They are living in a fantasy world they believe to be real.  This presents very real difficulties in trying to teach children, and it is this cultural divide which has become the problem.  Immediately upon entering a classroom in a public school, they will expect you, the teacher, to accommodate them.  If you speak in the King's English with proper usage, they will alienate you as out-of-date.  The politics of the school system brings me down.  I am comfortable facing a classroom full of young people, because it is obvious they need and want to learn.  They have weathered the worst American scenario in recent history, a two year black out promulgated by a human engineered pathogen which found its way inexplicably into the world's mainstream.  We are doing well to be alive, but for America to recover public education must rebound.  It will have nothing to do with a smart phone.  It will have nothing to do with the internet.  It shouldn't have anything to do with a laptop computer, because this technology is a self-absorbed, revenue earning, market tool to serve corporate America.  It has done nothing but degrade American society.  I will repeat myself.  The inclusion of the smart phone or the laptop computer in education has made us dumber.  Perhaps this is where gainful employment would be sought, in the technology field, but learning to run "apps" on a phone will not cure you illnesses, help you lose weight, or earn you an able and loyal mate.  They are illusions, and we have been fleecing our youth for two decades.  Now as the Baby Boomer generation fades, there is little to take their place.  We failed to hand the reins to our children.  We failed to invest in them and humbly step aside.  Instead in a calculated, seemingly inexorable, rowdy, extreme, and far right ideology exploited our children for our own personal gain.  God had nothing to do with, but Washington Republicans do.  In a nutshell this anti-Biden vocal faction seems to think that no one will return fire from their incessant inciting lobs.  Democrats are too peaceful, passive, and God-fearing to fight, and probably this is the best political discourse.  They seem to want a fight, but you can't argue with an ass.  You are just wasting your time.  It may be sooner than later that the American people will tire of the gun lobby, our lack of gun control, and the murder of their children from the weapons of these manufacturers who think a minor can own an assault weapon.  We could call it civil war, because supplying munitions to Ukraine all ready constitutes World War III.  We are just not saying it.  American politics, in spite of a violent coup on the Capital on January 6th, still is feigning civility and peace, and it is working.  I don't know about you, but when I think about our youth and the example we are setting for them, it makes me angry.  The tone of the news, the antagonism of tabloid television, and the low brow mud slinging is doing nothing for America.  It is wasting our time, when we could feed the world, save the Earth, and love our neighbors and ourselves.