We cannot trust anyone.
We have a media that insisted on reporting about Burn a Quran Day, front-page headlines reading, “Who is Terry Jones?” capturing the attention of our nation and its leader as if the pastor was some kind of John Galt-esque figure looming in the background of the United States and a symbol of our country’s supposed mass xenophobia against Muslims.
Without the attention we provided to this handlebar-mustached religious nut, he’s just an idiot with a stack of papers and some matches.
The media should have been reporting instead about how Mahmood Karzai, brother of our Afghan puppet, magically made $800,000 amidst Afghanistan’s financial crisis, or how the Kabul Bank is insisting that the U.S. intervene even more in any attempt to stabilize the bank (TARP, anyone?).
Siddiq Ahmad Usmani, chairman of the Afghan parliament’s Budget and Finance Committee, recently said, “[The United States is] responsible for whatever crisis will come to our country.”
If you thought a lunatic burning the Quran caused chaos in Afghanistan, wait until it gets a taste of corporatism.
In addition, we have two sides of a highly partisan Congress trying to convince the public that they’re each going to fix the economy better than the other side will, yet Capitol Hill employees owed $9.3 million in overdue taxes at the end of last year, a small percentage in comparison to the $1 billion owed by federal workers nationwide.
Talk about tax cuts.
I repeat: we cannot trust anyone.
It’s time we stopped depending on other people for what we need and start to get it ourselves, especially when it comes to education.
If you want to learn history, read. And when you’re tired, read more. Ask yourself questions like, ‘Why did we oppose Hitler but side with Stalin?’ and, ‘Did the Civil War really have anything to do with slavery?’ because these are important questions.
Nothing will come of memorizing the initials of New Deal programs and how Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize in 1962.
We are missing a lot of content in our education system, but what we’re missing most is context. After every sentence your professors tell you, ask them, “Why do I need to know this?”
If they say, “Because it will be on the test,” walk out of the room, run, and keep running. That’s not education; that’s a distraction.
This entire generation has grown up thinking the powers above it are providing strength, character and freedom. Instead the powers above have given this generation passivity, blandness and oppression.
If you use the same cookie-cutter for a batch of dough, you’ll come out with the same exact cookies.
My message to this generation is that you must give yourself credit for the things you have done. Grow because you want to and treat others in the same manner, or else we will one day be looking for our John Galt.
Echoing Emerson, “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.”
I repeat: we cannot trust anyone but ourselves.
Reach Brian at brian.p.anderson@asu.edu
