A thousand words

Deception Perception

I find it interesting to see the different interpretations of various events.

Whether it's the shooting in Tucson, which political party truly cares about the country, whether or not the health care law will help or harm our country, eyewitness accounts of crimes and criminals, or just personal issues, we all have an opinion, and we all have a perception that is influenced by our own biases and prejudices, as well as those of who surround us.

I suppose it's all a fascinating psychological study for anyone who wants to explore it, but that's not my field. I enjoy reading articles about cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and downright delusion, but I'm not qualified to give an authoritative take on it. Just my opinion.

I'm always willing to cut certain people some slack. I know that much depends upon the atmosphere in which you were raised, and I know that parents can be an affirmative or a destructive influence on their kids. I know that it's hard to break away from seeing things a certain way and to question belief systems that are deep and pervasive. I know that kids can be easily manipulated, especially when in an atmosphere of emotional turmoil and blackmail. I also know that as we get older, it's harder to question authority and to question truths that we have been conditioned to believe.

It's much harder for me to forgive young adults or middle-aged people who still have the ability to question and question HARD. Those who shouldn't be so set in their ways that they have become incapable of seeing other points of view, or having any sort of reasonable discussion about issues. Those who are either so blinded by their own hatred or so mentally weak and malleable that they can be easily manipulated by others. It's not unusual to see these types resort to puerile insults and name-calling.

No matter that events are twisted to justify their own misconceptions; no matter that their own actions are ignored or minimized; no matter that despite years of insults and anger, others are still expected to not only jump when demanded to, they are expected to ask, "How high? How much?"

Welcome to Reality™. Words and behaviors have consequences, and treating people badly, with rancor and disdain, will not make them do what you want them to do. Spin it whichever way you want, but such behavior will come back to bite you. You'd think some people would have figured that out by now. Apparently not. Don't come crying to me because you screw yourself over time after time, don't give me a sob story about how everyone hates you and everyone else is horrible, and quit bitching because you backed yourself into a corner that you can't get out of. Your bad behavior and ongoing bitterness are your own problems. Your poor negotiation skills are the result of years of misdirection and mistreatment, and an inability to let go of a grudge.

It's fascinating from a psychological viewpoint. But it's also kind of pathetic. And frankly, quite boring.

Shot to the heart and you’re to blame

It's no surprise that the recent shooting in Tucson resulted in another discussion about guns and their prevalence in this country. I think this is a necessary discussion.

I've been thinking about this entry for a few days, and I've been thinking about the issue for some time now.

A little background. My Dad was a gun collector. He had a bunch of them. I mean...A LOT. I am grateful for this. He taught me how to shoot when I was in junior high school. But it wasn't just handing me a gun and telling me to point it and shoot; he taught me about gun safety, and he taught me a healthy respect for guns and for what they can do.

First and foremost? You never, ever point a gun at a person or at anything unless you intend to shoot it.

If picking up a gun to clean it or examine it, you first check to see if it's loaded. No exceptions.

If you want to keep a gun for personal protection, you'd better make damn sure that you are prepared to use it. If someone is harming you, or shows intent to harm you, it's not enough to point the gun at them and say in a trembling voice, "I have a gun." If you have that gun and you pull it on them, see the first point. Be prepared to shoot them. Know how to use the gun, know what it takes to pull the trigger, know how much it kicks, and know that if you shoot that person, you are going to be subjected to a mess on your wall and carpet that Spic 'n Span and Resolve isn't going to get out.

Does that sound harsh? It should. Guns are serious business, and they are not to be taken lightly.

I remember a few years ago, my Dad showed a young person in my family some of his guns. This young person's guardian was quite upset by this, said that she didn't want that to happen again. My Dad was doing what he did with me...teaching gun safety, teaching respect for guns. He showed this young person the type of rifle that he and his fellow soldiers carried in WWII, but the fact that this young person actually held a gun was somehow a horrible thing. I was amused when this guardian hooked up with someone who was also a gun owner. Suddenly everyone was pro-gun, pro-NRA, BANG BANG BANG! Heh heh. I guess circumstances change when you hook up! Fucking hypocrite. But I digress.

I know about guns. I know how to use them, and I know that I hope I never have to use one to harm another creature. (This is not a diatribe against hunters. There is no hunting at Nutwood, but I know that hunting keeps the deer population down, and serves as an important control in so many ecosystems that no longer have natural predators. I don't understand it, I don't participate, but I'm okay with responsible hunters. Just don't do it from a helicopter or in one of those bogus fenced-in compounds, okay? If you do that...fuck you.)

I appreciated my Dad teaching me how to use a gun and how to respect them. But I have grown increasingly disturbed by the "gun culture" in my country, in which assault rifles and extended clips are sold on a daily basis, hollow-point, armor-piercing ammunition is available, and guns can be bought at garage sales without any sort of background check whatsoever.

This is unacceptable to me. There is no reason for anyone to own an assault rifle or an extended clip unless they plan on killing a whole bunch of people in a really bloody, gory way. The images of people carrying such weapons to political rallies is chilling to me. This serves no purpose other than intimidation. I am also leery about obtaining a carry permit. In all my years of gun ownership, I never applied for a carry permit.

After Dad died, my sisters inherited some guns, and went to the shooting range. They invited me along, but I declined. I know how to use mine and don't really need to fire it. When one of my sisters told me that she was thinking about applying for a carry permit, I had some words of caution for her. I said, "If you carry it in your purse, do you think you can get to it in time? Do you really think you'll have the time to dig in your purse to get it out if someone assaults you? Do you know that it's more likely that someone assaulting you will get your gun away from you? Are you really prepared to shoot someone?" I don't know what she'll decide, but in our cowboy culture, these are questions that people often don't think about.

I participated in a discussion thread on a local station's Facebook page about this topic. The overwhelming majority said that gun laws should NOT be stricter. Here was one exchange I had (the other person's name is changed to protect the...whatever):

Me: We have very lenient gun laws, and there is no denying that our deaths per capita due to guns reflect that. Again, I am not anti-gun. But I think we've got a problem here with a certain cowboy mentality in which a robbery would be treated with a death sentence by some. Do you really want to murder someone because they want to steal your wallet? If someone were threatening to kill me or my loved ones, I wouldn't hesitate, personally. But for things? Why would anyone want to kill someone for robbing them? A response a bit out of proportion to the situation, wouldn't you say?

Keith: Beth, you are anti gun and a pacifist.Which is fine,but dont [sic] put words in peoples [sic] mouth [sic] about killing people over "things". Someday you might have to thank a "cowboy" for saving your life. I would certainly use a firearm to protect my things.I wouldnt [sic] allow the perp to go on to rob somebody else. Shooting somebody in defense of property or self isnt [sic] "murder".

Me: Keith, which part of "I'm not anti-gun" don't you understand? I am neither anti-gun, nor a pacifist. I stated both quite clearly, and stated that I would protect myself or my loved ones—or a stranger, if it came to that—if our lives were in danger. I know how to shoot, and I'm quite good at it, because my Dad taught me when I was in junior high. My point is that if we are willing to kill a person because of things rather than a threat to life, I think we've got a real problem in this country. It means that we value possessions more than a human life. Personally, I'd rather not head down that road.

On the same thread, someone wondered why anyone needs an assault rifle. The response was "It's all about freedom." DO YOU LOVE YER FREEDOMS???

I value my freedom as much as anyone, but I am very disturbed by this strange gun culture going on in this country. Check this CDC report on gun deaths as well as this International Journal of Epidemiology study on worldwide gun deaths. Our gun deaths due to homicide, suicide, and accidents are the highest of any civilized nation. This is indisputable.

I am not calling for a complete ban on guns here. Well, maybe...but I know that is not going to happen in my lifetime. But can we please stop thinking that we're all Dirty Harry and get our fingers off of the fucking trigger? Can we consider some reasonable gun laws that restrict weapons that are designed to kill the maximum number of people in the shortest amount of time? I honestly don't know what is the cause of this hair-trigger, kill-em-all-and-let-god-sort-em-out-later mentality.

People have said that if there were more people at that Tucson Safeway that were carrying weapons, this never would have happened. I question that. If it were harder for people like Loughner to get high-capacity clips, he might not have been able to shoot as many people as he did; and do we really want a bunch of people packing at our local grocery store? That honestly doesn't make me feel safer. Even at a Safeway. Ha. The OK Corral shootout happened a long time ago. Do we really want to return to that sort of wild west mentality?

Gunshot wounds are ugly, messy, bloody, and horrible. A head shot would be even more horrible. We're talking brains on the wall, people. That is something that will stick with you for the rest of your life...maybe your family will see it, too, and they'll remember it. Is this something that you really want to do? Do you really understand the implications of what it means to shoot a person? Do you really want to do that just because they are stealing your shit, or trespassing on your property? Do you believe that theft justifies a death sentence? Are you prepared to be judge and jury and execute that person in your home? If someone steals your purse, are you willing to shoot them for it? Do you realize that if they steal your purse, they probably got your gun, too? So now you've put a gun in the hands of a criminal.

I feel that these are legitimate questions, ones that we all need to ask ourselves. The Second Amendment was written when muskets were in use. Not high-capacity assault weapons.

I don't think that anyone is in a hurry to seriously talk about gun control right now. But I think we should.

Let this be the end of it

Like most of you, I watched with growing horror as the events of yesterday unfolded. If you've been living under a rock, a shooter visited a town hall meeting in Tucson and shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head, as well as several others. Giffords survived, although her long term prognosis is unknown at this point. Six others did not survive, including a federal judge who had stopped by to greet her, and a 9-year-old girl who had just won the presidency of her student council and was interested in politics. The young girl was one of the "faces of hope," a child born on 9/11.

I cannot begin to convey the feeling of disgust, sadness, and outrage that I feel about this. I do not want to overly politicize this tragedy, and my heart goes out to every family member involved, and anyone who called these victims friends. But a few things need to be said.

By all accounts, the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was not right in the head. They have been unable to determine what his motivation was, or what his political philosophy might be. He's not talking to the authorities. It really doesn't matter. He's got problems, and he is going to be prosecuted for what he did.

What does matter is that the level of angry rhetoric and hatred has grown so great in the past couple of years that I and others felt that something like this was inevitable. I am not going to place all of the blame on Sarah Palin; there is no evidence that he was an ardent follower of her or others of her ilk, like Beck and Limbaugh. However, she and her special friends bear some responsibility in this, and it absolutely needs to be said.

I remember during the campaign when Palin would speak at McCain-Palin rallies, talking about how Obama was "pallin' around with terrorists," and angry crowd members would shout "Treason!" and "Kill him!" Palin laughed it off, continued to fuel the anger of these ignorant cretins. Even McCain (who will have to live the rest of his life knowing that he is the one who thrust Palin onto the national stage) had the presence of mind to tell one of the aforementioned cretins that Obama was not an Arab or any other such silly accusations. "He's a decent family man and citizen," said McCain. Palin had no such compunctions about stopping the angry mob, and in fact, has continued to egg them on since Obama took office. Even during the campaign, I remember thinking and saying, "Nothing good can come from this."

Well, now that has come true, and I am not happy at all about being the Cassandra in this particular case. It looks as though 18 people in all were shot, and six are dead.

Although I cannot place the blame directly on Palin, it appears as though she seems to comprehend on at least some sort of reptilian brain level that she does bear some culpability. Her handlers have been busy little beavers, scrubbing her online sites to remove things like this graphic. Thanks to the wonders of the Interwebz, such things never really die, and this picture is every-freakin’-where. Remember the races she was targeting? How those gun sight cross-hairs appeared on those particular races? Giffords was one of them, and expressed her concerns about this tactic. It's chilling to listen to the Congresswoman say "There are consequences." Indeed.

Also missing is Palin's tweet in which she urged "commonsense conservatives" and "lovers of America": "Don't retreat...instead, RELOAD!"

Although Loughner may not have been a direct follower of Palin, there is no doubt that Palin's violent rhetoric has contributed to what one Congressman described as a "toxic atmosphere" in our country as of late. It happens on both sides, but you'll find that the vast majority of violent, inciting speech comes from the far right. You won't find Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow pitching dehydrated food for the coming Apocalypse. There is no place in our national discourse for such shoot-em-up imagery, and we need to get back to the place where we all understand that disagreements do not need to be violent. It's one thing to feel passionate about our political views; it's quite another to continually use violent metaphors and talk about revolution and "2nd Amendment solutions." (That one belongs to bugshit crazy Sharron Angle.)

It really needs to stop here. This tragedy is a national one. Not just one of violence and death and bloodshed; it is a tragedy of our, if I may borrow one of Palin's favorite phrases, American exceptionalism. We value the freedom to speak our minds, we value that we are guaranteed the right to peaceably assemble and even protest. We value that our legislators are accessible enough that we can meet them and speak with them at town hall meetings like the one in which Giffords was participating. These are things that I value, and I know most, if not all, of my fellow Americans do also.

Ms. Palin, I put it to you that YOU are the one that doesn't understand American exceptionalism, and that you don't have the slightest grasp of how your words are endangering that. YOU are the one who is putting at risk our legislators' availability to their constituents. YOU are the one that will make people think twice about running for public office because they fear the actions of people like Loughner who are spurred on by your endless violent-speak and that of your supporters and your fellow reactionaries. You need to acknowledge that you have played a part in this current toxic atmosphere, but I doubt if you will ever bring yourself to admit any sort of culpability. Nothing is ever your fault, and you just don't have the intelligence necessary to understand that words do matter. YOUR words do matter. ALL of our words matter.

There is nothing good about this tragedy. But maybe, just maybe, it will put an end to Palin's time in the spotlight on the national political stage. That's the kind of hopey-changey thing that will work for me.

Freshening up

As the snow falls—looks like about six inches so far, and I'm sure there will be more throughout the night—I did some reading and then took some time to change the look here a bit.

What do you think? Bear in mind that if you tell me you hate it, think it's the ugliest thing you've ever seen, that it induces projectile vomiting in you...I'm not going to change it for a while. I like it. I've always dug the turquoise/black combo. I find it very retro, and I even like it when it comes to clothes. (I also like pink and black.) So I'm sorry if you hate it, but I'm not going to do anything about it. Ha! I do like feedback when I try something different, and I quickly dropped the failed experiment of spacer bars when I tried them a while back. A few people said meh, not really necessary, don't bother. I agreed. And the big change came when I dropped Comic Sans on the advice of Milwaukee Dan #2. I believe he said it looked kind of juvenile. *gasp* Kiss of death! I am eternally grateful, Dan, that you saved me from myself.

It looks to be a quiet weekend at Nutwood, with lots of snow (and lots of reading). The original plan was to go to the ND-St. John's basketball game, but then I found out that the Colts are playing at the same time Saturday evening! Drat! It worked out okay, though. Tickets were swapped for another game, everybody's happy, all is well. Now we'll see if my Colts can win and advance in the playoffs. They're favored by about a touchdown, but it's been a tough season with numerous players injured. They seem to be finding their groove lately, so I'm hoping that will continue in the playoffs.

A few further remarks about my previous entry concerning the censoring of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I can in no way, shape, or form justify the censorship of that novel, which is part of our history. I honestly would rather not see it taught. Let parents who love books teach it to their kids. It is a disgrace and disrespectful to one of our greatest writers to revise his book in such a manner. I find it as bad as Texas trying to minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in our country's beginning in their textbooks. I don't know about anyone else, but I've been having such discussions for most of my life, and continue to have them with friends of all stripes. Sanitizing Huck Finn isn't teaching anything. Removing the vernacular from the context of the novel results in nothing more than a fucking Hardy Boys book. It is so much more than that, and deserves to be read and discussed in its entirety.

Anyone who has read me for a while knows that I am virulently anti-censorship; I find it ridiculous that some of our classic books have been removed from the classroom because of epithets or situations deemed unacceptable by a very vocal group of fundamentalists and misguided fools. I just don't see how gutting these books and then offering them up like pasteurized pablum is helping the situation. I hope this will lead to a greater dialogue about what our schools are allowed to teach.

I have to chuckle, though, because I'm guessing that Mark Twain would observe this brouhaha with disgusted amusement. I also think that he would find a certain evil enjoyment in knowing that over a century later, he's still being talked about and still causing controversy. If there were a literary afterlife, I can imagine Twain and Ambrose Bierce sitting down and hoisting a few while they laugh at our idiotic prudishness.

We really are ridiculous. You know that, don't you? Laugh or be damned. That’s how I feel about it, and I choose to laugh.

What the Huck?

Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, it's back-to-back entries from me! I haven't done that for a while, but the issue is censorship, and I'm on that like mud on a pig. Also racism, and I'm on that like white on rice. (See what I did there?) I'm mixing metaphors, but that's not important now.

You've probably heard about a publisher's decision to censor Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In short, the word 'nigger' will be replaced with 'slave,' and the word 'Injun' will be replaced with 'Indian.' I actually revised myself there...I originally wrote 'edit' rather than 'censor,' and I think my revision is appropriate. This isn't a matter of editing something for offensive content; this is censoring a classic American novel because of a word that is now highly offensive.

I read an interesting piece on Politics Daily by Delia Lloyd concerning the Huck Finn controversy, and it served to gel my own thoughts concerning this. I already had an opinion, and it seems that most of my literary-minded friends share it: this is unwarranted and unwelcome censorship of a novel written only a couple of decades after slavery ended in our country. This is not just a classic American novel. It is a historic American novel because of its context. I did understand several of Ms. Lloyd's points, and left a comment there, but I want to address some of those issues here.

She mentioned that she and her husband bought an edited version of an Eminem CD for their 10-year-old son because of language.

There is, to be sure, a big difference between contemporary rap music and a classic of American literature. Or at least so my son thought when I posed this question to him. His view is that rap is an inherently angry genre and, as such, swearing is central to its aesthetic (word choice mine, idea entirely his). But he says that he can still enjoy a rap CD even when it's "sanitized"--it is, after all, still entertaining.

In contrast, he thinks that "Huckleberry Finn" is a book about social relationships. And so to remove the language in which those relationships are couched is both historically inaccurate and distorts the meaning of the text.

That is one smart kid, who seems to get what his parents don't. There is a big difference between a music CD and a classic American novel. If you take out the bad words in music, you're still left with some great music. (I'm never a fan of censoring music, but there is stuff that is probably age-inappropriate--that is up to the parents to control. Good luck with that. haha) If you censor Twain's writings, you are censoring and attempting to sanitize a piece of our history. A shameful history, but one that cannot and should not be forgotten. Lloyd wrote:

I remember a few years back, when one of the teachers at my daughter's school tried to get a group of 8-year-olds to understand racism by having all the white kids in the class yell all the racial slurs they could possibly come up with at all the children of color. Her objective was to get the students to see the idiocy and toxicity of racism. But the experiment backfired. The children were frightened, confused and horrified. And even here, in the less-than-PC U.K., the teacher nearly lost her job. It's not clear that you can do Twain--or racism--justice in the hour you get as a teacher to talk about this book.

Good grief, how is that acceptable? How is hurling epithets a teaching exercise in any way, shape, or form? And why was it the white kids throwing the epithets at the kids of color? If that was an experiment to teach the students about the idiocy of racism, I think it failed miserably and only highlighted the idiocy of the teacher. Why would this book be a matter of an hour of discussion? When we read books in my school, we spent at least a few weeks going through them and discussing them. Lord of the Flies, A Separate Peace, Of Mice and Men, Hamlet, Macbeth, and so many others. These were not works that could be discussed in an hour. Why is Huck Finn confined to an hour? It has many more implications and much more significance than warranting only an hour of discussion on it.

Last year, my colleague Mary C. Curtis wrote about talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger's use of the N-word, which she uttered so liberally during one particular on-air rant that the subsequent outcry prompted her to say she would retire. As Mary points out, "This is the word that people with ropes used as they lynched men and women for an afternoon's entertainment. This is the word craven politicians shouted to stoke racial fear. This word has been used as background music to terror."

Most certainly...but equating Twain's book, a contemporary account of the treatment of slaves and Huck's dangerous friendship with Jim, to Schlessinger's radio rant and inflammatory use of the word 'nigger' in order to boost her ratings is a ridiculous comparison.

In short, the N-word isn't just a piece of regional jargon that marks a particular moment in our nation's history. It's a hateful word. It's poisonous. And it's pervasive. Does all this mean that in the future, children should only consume the kindler, gentler Huck Finn 2.0 that Gribben [the person who is revising the novel] and Co. are peddling? I'm not sure. But this issue certainly isn't as black and white, so to speak, as some critics are making it out to be.

Yes, it IS a hateful word, and it's still in use today. I hear it once in a while, and it makes me cringe and it infuriates me. But strapping a paper strip on the book stating "Sanitized For Your Protection" is not solving anything. It is ignoring a very real, very significant, and very shameful period in our history. If we cannot rationally discuss this with our kids and with our students, we are only perpetuating the problem. Much like some of the Confederate groups trying to revise history and paint the Civil War as being about nothing more than states' rights, it is revisionist history. Huck Finn isn't just an ordinary novel. It is part of our history. It's the story of a young man finding friendship with someone that he isn't supposed to befriend because that is what society dictates.

If our students can't comprehend the full meaning of the book and its place in our history after a reasonable and rational discussion (one that lasts more than an hour), what does that say about us as an intelligent society?

Am I raising the bar too high?

A new year, a new start

I hope everyone had a good time at whatever New Year soirees you chose to attend! I was with a small group of family members at my sister's house, and we all got silly with Rock Band. It was great, as always, to see my niece Jen (she was visiting from San Diego), and I sure wish we lived closer! I also got to know a little better a young lady who I guess would be my great-niece by marriage. She was just the coolest kid, wearing an awesome hat, putting up with all of us coots...haha! It's really great to be around a cool kid like that. It gives me hope for our future.

Anyway, as far as I know, there are no pictures from that night, which I am quite happy about. Full disclosure is highly overrated.

Well, the Republicans took the reins of the House of Representatives this week. I suppose the title of this entry sounds fairly optimistic. I generally am an optimistic person, but I see very little to make me feel that way as I watch this change. I wouldn't say that I'm pessimistic; I don't believe this is the end of our country, unlike the cries we heard from the conservative right about, for example, the passage of the health care bill signaling Armageddon. Who would say such a silly thing? That would be our current Speaker of the House, John Boehner. (Just so you don't think I'm lying, that's a FoxNews link.)

I started to look for a picture of him to put up here, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead, I chose something pretty and non-orange.

I don't know...I listen to the things being said and I feel an odd mixture of disgust, hilarity, outrage, and disbelief. I'm doing my best to go with the hilarity part (apparently Michele Bachmann is considering a run for President...HAHAHA!), because I really want to believe that we'll get through this. The truth is that this is far from a new start. There might be a change of guard in the House, but we seem to have gone back a few decades to a time when women stayed at home and knew when to keep quiet and knew when to make sandwiches and anyone who caught teh Gay did their best to pray it away and all those black folk just plain knew their place and shut the hell up. I suppose that's a bit of an exaggeration. Oh, except I heard Boehner say in his interview with Brian Williams that aired tonight that what he wants for kids is to have the America that he grew up in.

That's coming from a guy with eleven siblings.

::sigh:: I'm pretty sure we'll be okay. There will be a lot of things happening that make me feel ill, but I believe we'll ultimately survive. What bothers me the most about Boehner's statement, one that is echoed by teabaggers far and wide, is that he and his ilk just don't seem to understand that the America of his youth (and mine, since we're about the same age) is gone. As Roland Deschain would say, "The world has moved on." Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I suppose it depends on your outlook. Although I certainly miss the simplicity of those times, and recall my childhood with fondness, I know that there have been many amazing advances in many disciplines. Socially, medically, technically...so many good things. However, the American Dream is out of reach for more and more people these days. There is a growing gap between the richest among us and the poorest. We continue to give breaks to the richest rather than asking them to pay a proportionately higher share of taxes.

Why is this happening? I was listening to a story on NPR the other day (Boehner and his cronies want to consider defunding NPR, despite the fact that only a fraction of their funding comes from the federal government...just thought I'd mention that.) that talked about the very good wages for manufacturing jobs in countries like Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. Why are they able to keep such jobs and keep the wages high, much higher than those paid for American manufacturing jobs? The MIT professor being interviewed said that although there are many factors, education is key. These countries have a highly-educated workforce, and that education continues with job training. If an employee loses their job, they are easily able to obtain another because they are highly skilled workers.

I know that there is much more to our problems than this one part, but education is certainly key. We don't place a premium on higher education, and more and more people are unable to afford it. I laughed out loud when Boehner gave Brian Williams his advice for young people, which included "Get a good education." It seems a little disconnected to be advocating a good education when your party is not only giving the super-rich huge tax breaks, it is ridiculing those with a college education as some sort of "elites," especially if they went to an Ivy League college, or happen to live on the east coast or the west coast, anywhere but Real America™, or if they frequent liberal bastions like the salons of Georgetown.

It's a big world out there, with all kinds of people, not just rich straight white (or orange) Republicans, and if we want to compete on a global level--which is the only way to compete now--we have to place a high value on education and stop ridiculing those who actually get one as some sort of "elites."