Democrats and progressives everywhere are going berserk with hostility, disparagement, annoyance and fury against, Trump. Some of the hate--yes; make no mistake, it is hate--is downright inexcusable. Don't get me wrong; the GOP as a party deserves a lot of angry dressing down. But Trump's failings are all about (1) listening to bad advisers, (2) selecting bad helpers, (3) taking the bad objectives of the GOP seriously; and, of course, being insincere about treating women and minorities fairly and equally, and (4) being unable to disguise his shameless pandering to whites who despise Latino and Middle Eastern immigrants.
To people of little imagination (and possibly little education), an enormous wall across the border seems like a no-brainer. Just so do people in any neighborhood think that a big wall around their property would keep them safe. I can only laugh. But it won't be funny, five years from now, if the biggest money-spinner is going to be a company that builds walls around the homes of wealthy people. (And some not-so-wealthy people, too; you'd be surprised just how many middle class folk think they are plutocrats! Sad.) A big wall could make things harder for simple, law-abiding immigrants, true; but my guess is that the drugs will still come in, and the really big felons will also sneak in.
Mean-spirited responses to GOP actions can easily backfire. At the moment, the Democrat-dominated Congress is grinding along with determined obstructionism. There are a few Congressmen and women who want to serve notice on the President. In my opinion, abuse of Emergency Powers is strong enough to warrant impeachment.
Education
Let's leave that aside, for a while; people ignore the 'Educated' for various reasons. But no one can really understand the value of education except through a distorting lens.
People who have received a certain amount of education--and bear in mind that being put through the education machine is no guarantee that a person is educated. It suits the purposes of an educational institution to push a student through and out as quickly as possible, because unsuccessful students spoil the profile of a school--have all sorts of distorted views of how much their offspring can benefit from this process of 'being educated' by a college or university. In the end, the view of a student's parents, the view of the student's institution's administrators, the view of the teachers, the view of the students themselves, are all different, and all distorted. Even more distorted are the views of the government, of prospective employers, everyone. Some people are lucky; they're interested in what they're taught, and they have teachers who're interested in what they're teaching. (That last is largely true; very few people take on teaching as a last resort, or as a means of getting rich.)
I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed my education. I just loved every minute of it, which is part of the reason I ended up as a teacher. How hard can it be, I told myself, to teach a bunch of kids something they're probably going to love?
It took a while for me to realize that a few kids did love the material; others hated it, but they endured it because they felt sorry for me! Others pretended to like the material, hoping I would give them a good grade. But what a waste of time.
There's an expectation that teachers can make students like the material. You can only expect this to work so far; it is called motivation, and it is rare to find a teacher who has the art of motivating students, but who also know their material thoroughly. And, after a while, they burn out; motivating students is a joy-sucking way of life! These days, especially, students have a "Go ahead; make my day!" attitude towards being motivated; it's sad.
But education is actually about enjoying life. Life has many aspects; the more of these aspects a young human being can relate to, the less he or she is going to be bored. What about specialized education, such as in STEM fields? They enable students to possibly find jobs in occupations that will earn a lot of money for their future employers. Will the students themselves earn a lot of money? Probably. But probably not as much as the employers are going to earn! As the last year or two has demonstrated, those who make the most money are not the cleverest and best at what they do! Learn as much as you can, and focus on the things that are interesting to you; that's where you're going to do well. Don't neglect the basics: reading, writing, math, computers, and little bits of everything else. If you don't understand those basic things, you won't be useful to anyone for very long, and you're going to have to fight to stay alive.
More later.
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