How our Education system of today fails.

The discussion of education and poverty has heralded me back to a paper I wrote last year about how our 1960's style of education is robotic in nature. Poverty and Education are linked, those with better education arguably do better than those who have not. Lack of good education is a complex issue, and as such I could've written an entire book on all the different factors, but I instead focused on the way we teach. This is not a critique of teachers themselves, but the system in general, which I think needs major reform to adapt to the 21st century. This was my experience in my school growing up. Anyway, I'd like to share my paper with you all:

Of all the academic issues that plague adult learners today, the Robot Effect is one of the most troubling. What is the Robot Effect? It is simply put the turning of students into automatons whose only function is to absorb and then output data precisely as told to. It dehumanizes students, inhibits critical thinking and does not encourage problematizing. This begins during the formative years of K-12 and the effects can last a lifetime. The Robot Effect causes problems that are seen in the workforce today, as well as in higher education, because it enforces the didactic learning style which stifles creativity and innovation. A frame of reference is an idea that is discussed by Jack Mezirow, former university professor and author of the theory of “Transformative learning” states that; “Frames of reference are the structures of assumptions through which we understand our experiences” (8). The Robot Effect shapes our frame of reference negatively towards education and can be a block for those that could benefit from pursuing a college degree.

            When examining the Robot Effect, one must consider the cause, who it affects, when the effect is felt, and why it is a detriment to all who are exposed. The Robot Effect should be viewed negatively because it limits a person’s thinking by forcing students to learn the same way, which does not address the needs of the individual student, it also does not encourage real world type problem solving. It creates a generation of people who are easily replaceable in the workforce. The Robot Effect is caused from an outdated/overburdened and underfunded education based on a teacher student narrative of control. The Robot Effect hurts the workforce by creating an employee base that is unable to critically think and innovate. Innovation is at the heart of business. Every day new ideas are presented and old ideas are re-examined to see if we can improve on them. In these two areas people need to be able to “think out of the box” and innovate in order to come up with new interesting ideas. This is where the Robot Effect is a huge problem. Many who have learned this way lack the habits of mind required to think and innovate as well as be self-directed and independent. The result of this is people who are unable to cope with the business world of today.

            The ability to problematize is also essential today for new developments and innovations. The Robot Effect, however, is the antithesis of being able to problematize. Robots don’t innovate, robots don’t problematize, they only do what they are told exactly how they are told to do it. The system is flawed by not showing other/more different ways of thinking. This attitude is prevalent in K-12 education as you are told to answer questions a certain way and not deviate. There are some questions that have definitive, known answers: what color is the sky and what is the sum of two plus two? But not everything is so cut and dry, teachers don’t always tell you the fundamental ideas behind the color of the sky, or the concepts behind two plus two.  In the Robot Effect, it’s either right or wrong, 1 or 0, and yes or no.

This of course does not place the blame on the teacher; it is the system itself that is at fault. Paulo Freire, a Brazilian born (and later exiled) educator, references this by saying “Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize they are only serving to dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality” (243). In fact there are many wonderful educators who are dedicated to opening up the minds and hearts of the student, but a student must also be self-directed to benefit from them. A good example of this is found in Mike Rose’s essay “Entering the Conversation” where Rose, a professor of social research methodology at UCLA, had a series of instructors who changed his frame of reference and taught him the skills to become a self-directed learner and broadened his abilities as a student. Teachers like the ones Mike Rose had are what free adult learners from the Robot Effect, using an idea known as “Transformative Learning” that was championed by Jack Mezirow. The “problem-posing” method offered by Freire is a similar approach to “Transformative Learning.”  “Problem –posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality; thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation.” (249) In this quote from “Entering the Conversation” Rose shows that: “They liked books and ideas, and liked to talk about them in ways that fostered growth rather than established dominance” (108).Sadly, there are not a lot of students today who are able to find these types of liberal educators unless they enter higher education.   By that time, their frames of reference may be so jaded when it comes to education that they do not enter into the higher levels after K-12, or the didactic learning style is so comfortable to the student that he/she is unable or unwilling to branch out and become a cognitive self-directed learner.  Frames of reference are an important factor in education, and life in general, they shape our world and what we expect from it for example, if you have a negative experience with a math teacher you may end up with a bad attitude towards math in general, If you have a negative experience in K-12, you may not wish to continue education after.

A major issue within the Robot Effect is the idea of control. There are rules built into today’s education systems that encourage the use of dominance and control over a student. The teacher has the knowledge, the student has nothing, the teacher has the voice, the student must stay quiet, and the teacher can punish you, even take away your property, and give you detention, the equivalent of serving time in the jail system for minors. The teacher effectively uses these tools to dominate the class so that the students do what they are told. Paulo Freire can be tied into this idea of dominance when it comes to adult education and the workforce. In one of his pieces “The Banking Concept of Education.”, Freire uses the idea of the banking system as a form of control, where the instructor controls the classroom, establishes dominance over the student, and inputs knowledge he or she believes is most important for the student to have. Not only that, but the instructor also attempts to get all of the students to see only the frame of reference presented. This is a lot like a factory, a place where I’ve spent quite a number of years working at, where being a didactic learner is most useful. The idea that was drilled within our heads as a machine operator was that the machine does not make mistakes. It is the operator that is at fault, and so long as you (the operator) follow instructions to the letter, you will have a perfect part all the time. The issue here is that actual robots have become a commonplace staple within the factory, so why would we continue to educate in a way that creates human robots for manufacturing careers when actual robots can do it better, and more cheaply?

The Robot Effect causes harm to the people within it by making them think in an obsolete kind of way and tailoring them for careers that are being automated, therefore the worker himself is becoming obsolete. This leads to a disparate workforce who are unable to work in the field they were best at, and unable to learn new skills and new ways of thinking to be able to work in other fields that require the worker to be a critical thinker. In his essay “Transformative Learning” “Jack Mezirow references the “Key Competencies for workforce preparation identified by the Australian government, employers, and academics include analyzing information, communicating ideas, planning and organizing activities, using mathematical ideas and technology, working in teams, solving problems and using cultural understandings” (8).” None of these competencies are really taught by the Robotic style of learning, therefore students going into these types of workplaces after K-12 are not prepared for them, instead they require a college education that many cannot, or will not be able to enter into. 

There is another, more personal issue involved in the Robot Effect, it is the fear of becoming self-directed, of throwing off the shackles of didactic learning, and no longer being a receptacle of knowledge as Freire would put it. It is fear that can stop many adults from entering higher education. They look back into the experiences of K-12 and think of being told that they were wrong when they had a different idea, or that they were not smart because they learned differently than was expected, and therefore developed the frame of reference that they could never make it college. Mike Rose referenced this fear of education, “And my fears of science and mathematics prevailed: Pereira hall, the math and engineering building, seemed and unfriendly mirage, a malevolent castle floating in the haze of a mescaline dream “(99). To many adults this is how a college appears. It is not just those who choose not to go to college, but even those who are in college are affected by the fears from didactic learning.

To succeed one must become a self-directed learner, but fear of looking stupid in front of your peers and your instructor comes from the experience of being told that you’re wrong in K-12 can stop an adult learner from participating much like the story of Mike Rose and how his frustrations often discouraged him. Also the lack of communication between student and teacher during K-12 can also hurt the adult learner because they cannot create a dialogue where the students’ ideas are heard. Consequently in higher education many students do not attempt to communicate their ideas as they draw upon their frames of reference of what a classroom is supposed to be, as shown to them in the K-12 environment. The K-12 environment according to Freire is one of narration. “This relationship involves a narrating subject (the teacher) and patient listening objects (the students)” (240). The fear created from this relationship is an inhibiting factor when it comes to getting the most out of higher education. Mezirow states that in a successful classroom “The educator functions as a facilitator and provocateur rather than an authority on subject matter.”(11) That currently is not the case in K-12 and we have the Robot Effect to blame. Robots do not engage in dialogue with their programmers, nor do robots even have ideas to communicate. Another fear that adult learners contend with due to the Robot Effect is the fear of questioning the teacher, the teacher known for his dominance over the classroom in K-12 is portrayed as someone who cannot be questioned, and someone who can punish you for questioning them. It is this fear that rules the classroom. Just like a robot, a student cannot question its master.

An important aspect of the Robot Effect is the dehumanization of the student. When a student is dehumanized the very core of who they are is taken away, objectifying them.  Mezirow states that “A defining condition of being human is that we have to understand the meaning of our experience. For some, any uncritically assimilated explanation by an authority figure will suffice. But in contemporary societies we must learn to make our own interpretations rather than act on the purposes, beliefs, judgments, and feelings of others” (5). Freire agrees with this approach in that humanization states that; “people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality , but as a reality in process, in transformation.” (248) The Robot Effect opposes that defining condition and serves to dehumanize by empowering a single authority figure to explain everything you’ll ever need to know about education. A student who is dehumanized will still have ideas, thoughts, feelings but they will not be acknowledged and because of that, their frame of reference changes into one where they know their thoughts and ideas are not heard and therefore not valued. When in a classroom those who are dehumanized become disillusioned and angry at the education system and can act out or choose to no longer pursue an education as an adult. Dehumanization in K-12 leads to the assumption of being dehumanized in higher education, and in workforce too.

In education there are those who forge ahead with learning, who are not content with being simple receptacles. These people are not overachievers; they are people who are taking an active role in their education. They are the self-directed learners. Being a self-directed learner means that you as a student are the one who is most involved with your success, the burden falls to you when it comes to being successful. People tend to go the way of least resistance, and they tend to blame all but themselves when something goes wrong. Being a self-directed learner puts the work in the students’ hands, as well as the blame. The fear of doing the work and taking all the blame makes the didactic style of learning an attractive alternative for many; it’s also familiar and therefore comfortable since we all grew up with the didactic learning style. Taking your education into your own hands is risky, it’s much easier to become a receptacle as Freire puts it, and it’s easier for the teachers of K-12 who have overloaded classrooms and unruly students. For the adult learner it’s easy to get set in their ways and be afraid of change and doing what is ultimately best for them.

The Robot Effect affects the workplace by creating a workforce that is unable to innovate, critically think, and problematize. It has the effect of displacing workers who only know how to take information and follow it exactly with robots that are more efficient, cost less and usually perform perfectly. The Robot Effect also creates the problems in adult education by giving students a negative connotation of education, which is based on a teacher to student narrative resulting in a classroom where few students participate because of the fear of being told they are wrong just for seeing things from a different perspective than the instructor. Finally the Robot Effect creates the fear of taking education into your own hands due to spending 12 years of school being told to think a certain way, listen to the teacher, never question anyone in charge, and that your ideas do not matter. Then there is the fear that taking your education into your own hands is too big of a risk to take. Compounded by the fear of failure, as referenced by Rose, is why the Robot Effect is so dangerous. This is why something must be done to K-12 education so that our future workers, and adult learners, do not have to struggle to learn to think for themselves.

                                                                                                                                    

Works Cited

Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's Underprepared. N.p.: n.p., 1989. 93-108. Print.

Freire, Paulo. Education for Critical Consciousness. N.p.: n.p., 1973. 240-51. Print.

Mezirow, Jack. Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. N.p.: n.p., 1991. 5-11. Print.

Romney Takes Advantage of The Libyan tragedy

I want to start by expressing my condolences to the Ambassadors family, and the staffers who were killed during the Libyan embassy attack. It was a cowardly and shameful attack against innocents by ultraconservative Muslims.

This attack was the result of anger due to an anti-Islamic film directed and produced by a man named Sam Bacile. A 52 year old real estate developer, according to Wall Street journal Bacile told them that "he made the film to portray Islam as a hateful religion" Also saying that "Islam is a cancer."

Isn't trashing someone else's Religion also hateful?

How much do you want to bet that this guy watches Fox news?

I'm not defending the extremists here, violence is violence, no matter who perpetrates it. I'm just saying Mr. Bacile shouldn't have been surprised that there was violence, we've seen this before.

As an Atheist myself I think it's really sad that people fight and kill over religion at all.


Anyway, after the attack the president issued this statement:

"I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.

I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

On a personal note, Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States. Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi. As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya's transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my Administration, and deeply saddened by this loss.

The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward."

Fairly standard, quite respectful, and immediately attacked by Mitt Romney.

Has he no shame?

Even other Republicans are distancing themselves from Mitt Romney's attacks. How do you even blame a sitting president for something like this? Romney called the presidents handling of the situation "Disgraceful" but what's really disgraceful is using a tragedy like this to score political points.

Romney's campaign is desperate, flailing, and like a cornered animal it attacks indiscriminately. 

Since the convention Obamas numbers have been slowly rising, while Mitts post convention bump has fallen flat. 

I think it's only going to get nastier as November draws near and as Romney falls behind in the polls. With all the money behind him I see a waterfall of even more negative ads and attacks coming in the next two months. 

It's going to be a very cold campaign season.

Romneys tax plan "He wont say."

The Obama campaign has come out with a great new ad hitting Romney about his tax returns, as well as his lack of transparency regarding his tax plan.

This Obama ad, called "He wont say" is actually the kind of ammunition the Obama campaign should be using to defeat Romney's presidential bid. Obama has been running the kind of campaign that has pulling no punches, which is great.

Liberals have had a long history of trying to be the better man, but no where does it say that being the better man doesn't involve swinging the sledgehammer of truth. I don't think anyone can deny that Romney has been waging a really dirty campaign. With ads that blatantly lie, such as the famous Welfare ad which is a huge distortion of a law president Obama had signed granting waivers that allow states to come up with new ways to increase employment, but only if they have a 20% increase in employment.

But facts never get in the way of a good lie.

Even more brazen is the way in which the Romney campaign doubles down on lies. Even so far as to say that "We will not be dictated by fact-checkers"

So let's contrast a bit here. Obama releases ads that are honest, if not a little unfair sometimes.

But Romney, not only releases completely false attacks, but when fact checkers point out his hypocrisy, he yells Liberal media bias and then doubles down.

And then there's the issue of Romney's tax returns, which he still refuses to release. Just the fact that we know more about the Higgs Boson particle then Mitts taxes is a little bit disturbing. There's a reason that he is hiding his returns, or more than one.

I think that if you're running to be President, we should have transparency, we should know what he does with his money. If he really believes a businessman should be a president, then why not follow the same standards as a business does when hiring someone new. Releasing tax returns is like the presidential version of a credit check, or even a criminal background check. It's also a measure of patriotism, someone who doesn't even believe in America enough to store his money here is not a patriot in my opinion.

Which leads me to say that Mitt doesn't care about helping Americans, he only cares about himself. His tax plan, which doesn't even add up unless you completely decimate the poor and middle classes, is all about using his position to enrich himself further.

We can only speculate on his plans because just like his Tax returns he is simply not giving any details about which deductions he'll eliminate to give those massive tax cuts for himself.

Just like a vulture he plans to let the Paul Ryan budget kill the middle class and then feast on the corpse with tax cuts that shift the burden to everyone but the super rich.

The man makes me sick.

9/11 and the wars that followed: Lessons of the past

Today is the anniversary of a very heinous attack on American soil. One that killed three thousand innocent Americans and set us on a path to war. This path has cost America dearly, in blood and treasure. This singular event not only launched us into a brutal ten year long war that still rages, but for a time it also brought us together as a nation, for awhile we were not red or blue, Democrat or Republican, we were America, and we were all in pain. From that pain came many things, things we don't all agree on, things that were necessary and those that were not. So what lessons have we learned from 9/11? Whether right or wrong these lessons need to be explored, some still need to be learned, and others, unlearned.

Before I do that I want to share my story of 9/11.

I was 17, in a small town High School in the middle of nowhere, my drive home included corn fields on either side of a main road, as well as occasionally sharing it with a tractor or an Amish buggy. New York City was a far away dream for many of us in this little conservative town. Like all of you around my age I am sure the day started as normal, talking with your friends before class, figuring out your day plans, making sure you have enough change for a candy bar to go with your lunch. It was just going to be a normal day.

But then it stopped being normal.

The first thing I noticed was an aide turning on one of the news channels before the start of class, which was unusual to say the least. The picture showed a large building with smoke pouring forth. We all started talking amongst ourselves, wondering what in the world was going on. For the first 10 minutes of class we watched as the news reporters began to piece together what happened.

And then our teacher shut off the TV.

He then attempted to continue with the lesson despite our protests with no success. It was another aide who then whispered something to him, which caused him to stop the lesson for the day and turn on CNN. I immediately saw why, A second plane crashed into the other tower. We also learned that the Pentagon had  been hit as well, it was then that it really sank it, we had just been attacked.

There was a collective outrage, as well as a sadness, and a time where we all stood together to honor the fallen of a then seemingly random, senseless terror attack. It wasn't till a few months later, when Al-Qaeda, and more prominently Osama Bin Laden took full credit for it.

Then came the calls for war.

War with Afghanistan. I remember hearing many of friends, join the chorus of calling for war with the Taliban for harboring Bin Laden.We all wanted to get the ones responsible,we all wanted to see the dead avenged. A couple of my friends even joined the military, though none that I know of ended up in Afghanistan. My uncle however, did serve there, he regularly sent us pictures, one of which was him disarming old Soviet mines.

Unlike many, I have not personally served, nor have I had any personal losses from the war.

Because of that, I count myself extremely lucky.

Many were not so lucky.

Not even one year after the invasion of Afghanistan, and the overthrow of the Taliban, we hadn't yet found Bin Laden, and President Bush seemingly no longer cared. In a famous 2002 interview Bush told reporters regarding Osama Bin Laden “I truly am not that concerned about him. I am deeply concerned about Iraq.” “I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you,”

Instead of focusing on Bin Laden, we headed into another war, this time with Iraq. A war that had nothing to do with 9/11, or terror, or Bin Laden. In fact he seemed to forget about Bin Laden, and Al-Qaeda while going after Iraq. Our forces even had him at Tora Bora, and we let him go.

It wasn't until President Obama had come into office that we really started to go back to finishing what we started in Afghanistan, going after Bin Laden. While Romney, in 2007 sounded a lot like Bush by declaring that “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

President Obama disagreed

So with Bin Laden gone, the war in Iraq over, and the war in Afghanistan winding down, what have we learned?

We've learned that both sides have politicized 9/11.

Some of you may even accuse me of politicizing 9/11 by writing this.

Source: http://costofwar.com/about/counters/

We've also learned that war is costly, we've spent trillions of dollars on, two wars, one of which was in my opinion completely unnecessary, and the other, well maybe we could have found a better way to get Osama and Al-Qaeda. Another thing we've learned is that the War on Terror, will continue without a foreseeable end. We've learned that many of us will give up some of our freedom in return for safety.

We've also learned that this war has taken a huge toll on troops, that more of our soldiers die from suicide than in combat. And that our combat veterans have been hit hardest by the recession. We've learned that our VA system is behind as it pertains to taking care of our Veterans, but is slowly improving.

Not all the lessons we've learned are bad. We've learned that so many Americans gave up their plans and their lives to fight for the country they love. We've learned that for every soldier that comes home, there is a support network of good people and organizations waiting to help them.

We've also learned that support for the lives of our fighting men and women transcends politics. Many of us, including me want to end the wars to protect our soldiers, and we don't care whether or not they're Democrat or Republican, we just want them to come home.

We've learned a lot in 11 years, not all of it good, not all of it bad, but we still have to learn to deal with the new reality of a post 9/11 world, and do our best to not make the same mistakes of the past. We need to learn  how to work together in this world with other people, other countries, and not go to war so easily. We need to learn how stop getting into conflicts that we don't know how to get out of. We need to learn how to respect other cultures, and religions, and to stop being suspicious of others because of the color of their skin, or what they wear. We need to learn how to trust again, not just others but ourselves, other Americans. We need to learn to stop the us vs them mentality that has dominated not only our politics, but our lives for the past 11 years.

We need to learn how to be us again.

The House of No: Exploring GOP Obstructionism

With the election less than two months away the Republican party has been hitting President Obama on the jobs numbers repeatedly. Despite having 28 months of consecutive job growth the unemployment number is still over 8%. Though there has been growth it's not where it should be, and definitely not where it could be. Last week during his speech at the DNC, the president laid out his case for reelection as a choice, countering the Republican strategy of making this election a referendum on the Presidents economic record. While making his speech President Obama made the argument that we are not done yet, and that if we choose him again, he can finish his work of fixing the economy. What was strangely absent was the red elephant in the room. The Republican obstructionism that has sought to stymie every effort to ease the suffering of the everyday American. The plan to stop Obama at any cost.  Mitch McConnell said it best.

Since declaring this to be his, and the Republicans top priority, it's no surprise that we have seen no action, no attempts, no bills to help spur job creation since the passage of the much maligned stimulus. Which oddly as Rachel Maddow points out many whom have asked for and benefited from, even VP pick Paul Ryan. Every bill that would be used to help the American people, is shot in the Senate, not even proposed in the House. Instead of crafting bills to help people underwater on their mortgages, or investing in infrastructure that would create jobs, Republicans instead focused on...abortion.

So jobs bills no, anti-abortion bills yes. So how could the party of Lincoln go out of its way to stop the economic recovery just to make the president lose in November? It's partly political, the right wing is banking on the idea that they can trash the economy and then blame it not only the president, but on the Democrats too. Former President Bill Clinton said it best in his speech "In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re-election was pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in." 

It's also personal. From attacking his character, his values, his patriotism, and even his place of birth. The Republicans have painted him as an enemy of the state. It may be great politics, and it sure does a great job at ginning up the base, but it makes it impossible to govern. 

It's because of this radical demonization of an actually centrist governing president, who's core legislative accomplishment, health care reform, was a Republican think tank hatched idea that was implemented in Massachusetts under then Governor Romney! Since the right wing news, spearheaded by Fox news and radio pundit Rush Limbaugh have compared Obama to Hitler and Stalin, it makes it pretty hard for any Republicans in Congress to back any idea endorsed by the President, regardless of if it's a good idea, or one they came up with. 

Republicans have literally painted themselves into a corner, if they work with Obama, the base, who believes all the bile spewed by the right wing media will primary them so fast their heads will spin. The result is that moderate Republicans, true fiscal conservatives and those who actually want to govern, either can't, or they get chased out of the party.

The GOP is backed into a corner, where the only option is to say No to everything until they win, regardless of who it hurts. Though I think it's ultimately going to backfire onto them, the only questions are when, and how much damage will they do the country until then?

This is why I now dub the Republican controlled house, "The house of No."

                                                               

Are You Better off?

The question that's being asked now by Republicans in the media is none other than the famous question asked by Ronald Reagan over thirty years ago. Are you better of now than you were four years ago? It's a great question, straightforward, easy, but very difficult to answer for an incumbent politician during a bad economy.

Graph Taken From Thinkprogress.org

Which is why the Romney campaign picked a perfect time to ask. With unemployment at an 8.2% national average, public sector employees suffering continued layoffs or pay freezes, the median household incomes for the middle class have lost ground, union membership is at the lowest in history. , gasoline is over $4 a gallon and food prices continuing to rise, not to mention the fact that though we've had job growth, many of those jobs are part time or low wage, this question seems to destroy any hope of Obama winning a second term, except  for this one caveat.

These things are directly attributed to Republican policies.

Yeah, they built that.

Over the past thirty years since Ronald Reagan, Republican administrations, with help from Democrats have aggressively campaigned against public workers, unions, social safety net programs, taxes on the wealthy and regulation on financial institutions. These policies have lead to right to work legislation, which decreased the power of unions to collectively bargain and have cut off funding that is used to elect pro-labor candidates. A relentless media campaign against so called "union bosses" have turned the people who would benefit from labor unions against them. Because of all these factors unions no longer have the power to strike effectively, and since the recession have become even weaker due to the availability of unemployed workers or the from the threat of relocating overseas.

So because of the decline of labor unions we see see a decline in income.

Another Republican policy that has led to one of the many problems we see today is deregulation. Republicans are the champions of letting business do whatever it wants, especially when it comes to the finance industry. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley act of 1999 significantly stripped financial regulation away and eventually led to the creation of the Too Big too Fail banks that merged lending with risky investment banking. To be fair Bill Clinton, a Democrat signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley into law.

Then there's the tax cuts, combined with increased military spending and constant warfare, that has led to massive deficits under Bush, have caused many states to cut social programs for the poor in order to keep those tax cuts as well as funding for the big programs, Social Security, and Medicare.

These Republican policies of cutting taxes on the super wealthy, and regulation on the banks that will cause another wall street collapse from risky gambling like in 2008, not punishing corporations that send jobs overseas, and getting rid of programs that help the poor and middle class are extremely unpopular with regular people.

Which is why we didn't see any mention of policy at this years Republican National Convention, most of it was pie in the sky pandering and good ol' fashioned Democrat bashing and lots of blame for the bad economy. These things conveniently skirt around the fact that there are a group of people who better off now than four years ago.

Well surely corporate profits hitting all time highs while wages stagnate are reasons we should throw out the incumbent president, right?

Wrong

These are the exact same people a Romney administration would benefit. The whole Romney plan involves cutting taxes for the wealthy & corporations, deregulation, and cutting the social safety net for those who need it.

And it wouldn't even be revenue neutral.

Graph Taken from Moveon.Org

Let's not forget too that we tried tax cuts and deregulation during the Bush years, and it led to massive deficits, modest job growth, and oh yeah, a giant recession!

We all also have to look at how the country itself is doing as compared to four years ago. In 2008 the economy was in free fall, but was turned around after the stimulus.

There's no mistaking the fact that yes, things are not great now, but they are getting better, slowly.

But Romney and the Republicans if they win intend to go back to the same policies that caused the recession but on steroids.

I don't know about you but I don't want to look back four years from now in a Romney presidency and think "Yeah I was totally better off under Obama. Now I'm just fucked."

Think about it.

The politics of Fear

While glancing at the usual places where I read and remembering some of my exchanges with conservatives as well as my impression of the RNC. I started thinking about how fear is not only being used, but created, exploited and cashed in on by those who are on the right.

The politics of fear are nothing new to our political spectrum, but even in an age of instant information, wireless communication, and media saturation, the politics fear are stronger than ever an in electorate of which half of are scared to death. 

Whether it be fear of Muslims from 9/11, to fear of the LGBT community; to becoming a failed economy like Greece, the Republican party of today are using fear as an effective political motivator to defeat Barack Obama. 

What drives that fear? 

People are resistant to change, change of habits, diet, perceptions, and ways of thinking. To change one must have an open mind. To many that can be a scary thing. It's sort of like being afraid of the dark, you don't know what you'll find there. To be afraid of the unknown is not something that's uncommon. To draw a parallel I look at the full Imposition of the ACA in 2014. People on the right are afraid of it one, because they're not sure what it means for them, and two, because the Republican establishment has perpetuated lies about it, saying that it's a bureaucratic takeover of your healthcare by the government, and that politicians will be getting between you and your doctor. Not to take away from the fact that the president didn't really sell healthcare reform to the people as well as he could have. 

Republicans have also sold the public on the uncertainty factor as it pertains to healthcare reform. Telling the base that businesses wont hire because they're uncertain about what will happen when the ACA becomes fully implemented, which pins unemployment squarely on the shoulders of Obama and the Democrats who passed health reform. That brilliant strategy shifted focus away from the massive obstructionism in the congress when presented with the jobs bills the President pushed for.

One last thing about fear of change, the whole idea of conservatism is keeping things the same, not progressing forward, not trying new and scary things. That has a huge impact on a part of the population who as a majority is undeniably older, who pine for the glory days of the 1950's (which ironically had tax rates of up to 90% on the wealthy) and are still afraid of social progress which is held as a platform of the modern GOP. That's not to say there isn't progressive elderly, I know a few myself.

But it's not just fear of change.

Fear of the "other" is also a huge part of the Republican party. That Democrats, and specifically Barack Obama, are somehow not American, that their ideas are...foreign. They've gone so far as to even question where the President was born, and when presented the evidence, it's hailed as some sort of elaborate cover-up. I wish I could say it's a fringe attitude, but with a CNN poll from 2010 saying that six out of ten Americans doubt that our president told the truth about his place of birth, I just can't. According to another Pew poll 17% of Americans think he's a Muslim, even though he assures us of his Christian faith. 

I personally don't care if he's a Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or even a Satanist, as long as he does his job and protects the constitution by not allowing his faith to influence policy. 

There is also this idea that President Obama is a socialist, which a whopping 63% of Republicans believe. This is a fear that is akin to the McCarthyism of the mid 20th century. It's a fear of losing the American way of life to some Communist hellscape filled with free healthcare! *gasp*

Perhaps the most worrisome part of this "fear of the other" on the right is the fact that major party spokespeople have spread the idea that all social programs, are either just handouts for lazy minorities, or reparations. All this does is gin up resentment for minorities by saying "Obama wants to take your hard earned money and give it to...those people." Since President is half black (his mother was white) he is still considered by the right as the physical embodiment of  the "other" and therefore only works on behalf of those who are not real Americans

Fear of the other doesn't stop there.

The LGBT community has also been used as a way to scare people into voting GOP. The Republican party repeatedly speaks out against gay marriage, and not just speaks out, but actively stops efforts at allowing gays to marry. They say of course that their purpose is to protect traditional marriage. A task that actually not possible since the definition and use of marriage has changed throughout the centuries. Still it's an effective way of making an argument that uses fear as a way to keep the rights of Americans down. The common theme among the right is that if we allow gays to marry, then men and women wont get married to each other anymore, people would marry animals and the entire human race would set itself on a course for extinction because no children would be born anymore. Everyone would just be gayin' it up all day.Oddly enough the "no more children" argument is also used by pro-life proponents as well.

Fear of Immigrants. 

More like fear of Illegal immigrants. The horrible bogeymen of the GOP is one that can be easily used to scare Americans who are already fearful of losing their jobs. A common refrain heard from the right is that the illegals are coming to take your jobs. The GOP plays on that fear, to their own benefit as seen with the new voter ID laws which are, according to the Republicans, there to stop "rampant voter fraud." The real effect of the voter ID laws are that many voters who are Americans and who have voted would no longer be eligible, a majority of which vote primarily democratic.During the debates there were even talks of a fence, an electrified fence, between the U.S. and Mexico. It got a great applause line from the crowd, though later Mr Cain came back and said it was a joke. 

Sure.

A theme also heard by those on the right is the fear of American decline.

This fear is manifest in the idea of America no longer being the city on the hill, the shining beacon of freedom, and it's people being complacent and no longer exceptional. It takes the form of opposing anything that is used for the common good as well as tools used to further that purpose, specifically social programs and taxation. We hear from the right on a regular basis how taxes are too high, there's too much regulation and red tape that's choking innovation and job creation. We hear how Obama and the Democrats are creating a culture of dependency on government programs like SNAP and TANF, and that use of these programs takes away your freedom and gives it to the government. We read and hear daily about the "evils of collectivism" over the government created Internet on our laptops, or on the radio in our union built cars as we drive down government created highways. The fear of collectivism seems to outweigh the understanding that we all need to invest in our countries infrastructure. The irony of this whole fear of American decline is that  those who have this fear are perpetuating an actual cause of decline by denying the government the ability to reinvest in Americas once envied infrastructure. 

What is the medias role in this?

The media has a large role in the politics of fear. Fox news is undeniably the number 1 rated news channel on television. Fox news calls itself fair and balanced, many of us know that it is anything but. Its role in the Republican party is nothing short of setting agendas, framing debates and demonizing opponents of the pro-corporate Republican agenda. It used its influence to galvanize the Koch backed Tea Party movement when it was still young and when it still railed against bank bailouts and against privatizing gains, while socializing losses. Yet went after the Occupy movement that were protesting the same things. Fox news regularly uses fear to promote their corporate agenda, by calling the president and his policies socialist. They also have called him Anti-American. 

Radio host Rush Limbaugh has even said that Obama hates America. All of this toxic crap plays up fear and the belief that we have an illegitimate, foreign born, anti-American, freedom hating, socialist that wants to give white peoples hard earned money to black people and illegal immigrants because he hates you.  

In my opinion the politics of fear is an extremely difficult thing to deal with. Fear is a base emotion that came naturally with evolution, it's kept our species alive but now it's hindering progress. How can one dispel the politics of fear if the only tools you have, facts, logic, and reason are ignored? Fear is in the gut, Colbert calls it truthiness. I call it a successful tool for manipulation. We can't stop fear itself, but we can stop those who spread it around with lies.