Welcome one and all to the kinder, gentler organized day of recognition for “work” – and those that do it. I’ve been lead to believe that Labor Day was a creation of the US Congress as a more acceptable alternative to an existing “worker’s holiday.” Does anyone know that that original holiday was?

I was listening to a story on the radio the other day. They were talking about a video taped message released by an Iraqi group. I don’t recall who released the message, or for that matter what the message was. All I recall is that this was supposed to be some heretofore anonymous group of Iraqi citizens expressing their anger. The individual on the videotape was doing so with a Kalashnikov assault riffle in his hands.

Before this conflict began I remember hearing stories about the quick demise of the regime, and the flood of gratitude that was sure to come from liberating the people of Iraq from Saddam’s reign. Now I listen to the news and I wonder. Were our expectations realistic? Are we getting the whole story from the news? Is it better than I think? Is it worse? Here’s what I’ve gathered from the news, as a casual observer… there are little to no basic services being provided to the public in Iraq. Efforts to rebuild infrastructures that make the delivery of these basic services possible have been slow and hampered by sabotage. More U.S. personnel have been injured or killed since the war ended. Frustration is mounting on all sides.

How often is gratitude expressed with a Kalashnikov assault riffle?

I am the first to admit that I have done no research to verify these statements. They merely reflect the “gist” that I have culled from news broadcasts over the last several months. But am I alone? Talking with friends and coworkers leads me to believe that they hold similar views. So what do we have, other than an unscientific collection of non-random anecdotes? How about a unscientific collection of anecdotes that is based something less than the whole story? I write this only as a disclaimer… I have no idea what I’m talking about (like you didn’t know that already).

So I admit that I don’t know. I just wish I believed that our leaders know.

Spring is in full swing, and that means political disgust abounds concerning the events in our state capital. The more I pay attention, the more I wish I were not paying attention. I see the bills being passed and I wonder if anyone is paying attention. I wonder if everyone was paying attention, would they continue to vote the way they do? We reap what we sow, and we didn’t put much effort into the planting. We satisfy ourselves with sound bytes and people who are not good leaders, but play one on TV. Now the harvest is in and we get to see the fruit of our labor. The results are not good. We’ve done a lousy job.

For about two months now, reading the news has been like a hobby. I did it in the morning before going to work. I did it at lunch. I did it at home over dinner. I did it again after Beth went to bed. The last week or so I could barely muster the enthusiasm to fetch the paper. Why is that?

It is shaping up to be another drawn out, depressing presidential campaign. We are a little more than two years into the current president’s term, and Democratic candidates have been running since last year. I know it’s early yet, but it seems like none of them have anything interesting to contribute to the dialogue. Once again, it seems like the party is positioning itself as the party of “no” rather than the party of well considered ideas or passion.

Are we lazy? Do we take too much for granted? According to the Federal Election Commission, voter turnout prior to 1970 was over 60% in presidential elections and around 50% in mid-term congressional elections. Since 1970 that rate has fallen to around 50% in presidential elections and under 40% in mid-term congressional elections (percentages = turnout / voting age population). Now for an admission: I thought it was lower. Maybe I’m a cynic after all.

So lets go where statistics have failed me. Lets go to the anecdotes. What do we as a population know? With budget cuts looming due to lack of funding, schools teach less in the name of “getting back to basics”. What has been the victim? Locally it has been the classes referred to as “electives”. Some musical courses, social sciences, and other miscellaneous classes have disappeared along with the seventh period that was eliminated locally ten years ago. Sure, those classes don’t effect literacy rates. They don’t effect SAT scores. They have little to do with drop-out rates. I would argue that they do have everything to do with rounding an individual. They teach things that students take an interest in; being classes that you don’t have to take they truly are “elective”.

I think eliminating these courses has two effects. First, it produces students who know less about the world. If knowledge is power, then having less of it necessarily means less power. Second, it saps student enthusiasm for school. An inspired, interested student is a student who is actively and enthusiastically involved in his or her education. Take that interest away and you have a student on the fast track to mediocrity, or worse.

So some signs point to a population that is becoming increasingly disinterested in the world around them, and our schools are eliminating the hooks that bring more of our youths into the educated fold. We seem to be a population moved by sound-bytes rather than an in depth discussion of an issue. “News” has degenerated into one more form of entertainment, in the name of the holy rating’s point. It’s all about, “what does our audience want to hear” rather than “what happened”. All the while it seems like many don’t really care anyway, and if they did there are fewer places to find out.

Ooh, I’m just dripping with optimism tonight. It’s time to put my cynicism away for the night.

In 1991 I was a college student. My girlfriend at the time was worried about a possible draft, but I was not. There was a war brewing, but I was shamefully carefree. Watching the footage on TV it all seemed so far away, almost abstract. I had no emotional attachment to what I was seeing.

Last week was different, but why?

I am twelve years older. I am no longer a college student, and I work for a living. I have a daughter. All of these things change your life, but do they change the person you are? Now the images I see have some meaning, but what did the trick? Is it the different circumstances under which hostilities have begun? Have my circumstances changed my perspective? Is it some combination of the two; or, is it something else entirely? Either way, I can’t say I’m carefree this time around.

People disagree.
You can’t always be right.

Would you agree that those two statements are accurate? I should hope so. In that case, think about world events for a moment. In particular, I’m thinking of a certain armed conflict that seems inevitable and the worldwide disagreement over whether it should happen. I don’t even want to discuss wether we should or not. Instead, I want to discuss the disagreement. I find it troubling that certain countries are being vilified for their opposition. If it’s true that you can’t always be right, and someone else thinks you are wrong, isn’t it their duty to let you know? So we don’t agree. In a case like this, that does not make the other folks “bad”. It may be frustrating as hell, but it is not reason enough for the kinds of reactions I’ve been reading about lately. The propaganda machine is in high gear. People are renaming the popular foods they eat (“Freedom Fries”), dumping out their expensive wines, threatening to exhume their fallen veterans, and generally acting like spoiled children. I would expect as much from my five year old daughter (“fine, I’ll take my toys and go home”), but not of my country; not of my fellow countrymen. Consider Europe’s history. Over the last century, Europe has been the scene of two world wars – fought on their own soil. Many people are still old enough to remember first hand what that was like, wether they fought in the war or not. They didn’t have any choice, it was going on outside their front door (and in many cases coming right through). Is it any wonder they might be a little bit more hesitant to fight? Wether this fight is right or not, I can imagine I might be a little worried if I could remember a war being fought in my back yard.

So we’re going to war. That seems to be a foregone conclusion. Let’s just lay off the dissenters. They’re not necessarily bad folks, they’re just speaking their mind.

Iraq. Korea. The US. Israel. India. Pakistan. France. China. Have I left anyone out?

Don’t ask me. I’m pretty sure I’ve never owned 100 billion of anything anyone would be likely to count, let alone lost them. Our government lately seems pretty good at loosing billions of things a year. But a single company loosing 100 billion U.S. dollars? In one year? I estimate that I made about .0000003% of what AOL Time Warner lost in one year. The displacement of my perspective could be measured on the Richter Scale.