Party Politics

Mikaela says:

No, not that kind! This is the party with beer kind of politics.

On Friday night, I went to a friend's house for a little shindig and had an interesting conversation about public education (what's left of it). We started, of course, with No Child Left Behind, or as my friend Shelle calls it, No Teacher Left Standing. She was pointing out the inherent problem of an educational policy that mandates all schools to improve every year by a measurable standard, even if that school is doing well already. Bush said something idiotic (big surprise) about wanting every school in America to be "better than average." Okay, that's ... well ... impossible. By definition, there have to be some schools above and some schools below in order for ANY school to be "above average."

Okay, so far, none of this is news, right?

But that's when someone else (a hilarious gay chicano who jokingly referred to himself as a 'mujer de revolution' -- you get the idea of just how funny he was!) pointed out that the whole policy is set up to ensure that public schools fail. And if all public schools fail, guess what? That's the end of public education, a social program that some Republicans and most conservatives have been trying to do away with since its inception. Think about this. Education isn't a right; it's a privilege. You earn a scholarship to a good school if you happen to be poor and smart. Otherwise, why spend public money educating a bunch of poor dumb people? Why not just teach them as much as they need to know in the factory? The problem with this, of course, is that America soon won't have factory jobs. I guess Bush is banking on most of us flipping burgers, since all the computer jobs will be outsourced to India, anyway.

None of this was shocking to me, but it was a moment of clarity in reinforcing -- AGAIN -- just how strategic the Right is at the moment and how far ahead of us they are. We're ten years away from the end of public education. Think about that! We have to convince America -- AGAIN -- that education is a basic right, like health care, like voting, like free speech.

I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but these days, conspiracy theorists are the only ones thinking broadly enough to begin to see the extent of the Right's program.

I have to hand it to these people; they're revolutionizing America, alright.

It's time for the left to get real really fast. It's hard to overestimate what's at stake.