It really isn’t hyperbole, or exaggerated statements not to be taken literally, to say that this election will shape the future of this country.
Should Harris win, there will be years’ more of taxes, oppression, and chipping away at the very democracy she and her ilk say they want to preserve. A Trump win will be a bit easier on the country, but it’s my fear that his next term will be like pausing a barrage of TikTok videos, just delaying the inevitable.
While perusing what now passes for political discourse on social media — that is to say the one-sided, barely literate and unresearched “facts” and “belief” — I came across examples of what is commonly referred to as “the quiet part said aloud.”
The first one left me gobsmacked, not only because of what was said, but that it was something that the government and its lackies — the vaunted useful idiots — truly believe is right.
It reads:
“Not sure where this (idea of) ‘parents should control what is taught in schools because they are our kids’ is originating, but parents do have the option to choose to send their kids to hand-selected private school at their own expense if this is what they desire.
“The purpose of public education in a public school is not to teach kids only what parents want them to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public.”
The chill of that statement almost knocked me to my knees. The quiet part said aloud is this: schools aren’t for teaching skills, but for indoctrination.
Please don’t take this as an indictment of the school systems. It’s an indictment of a government and a way of thinking that governments can and should be arbiters of what constitutes a proper education, one that will take our money — under threat, no less —to administer propaganda and mental conditioning in true Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” fashion.
Another missive passed on in probably the most cynical and derisive manner was actually from an acquaintance of mine, who said “I keep waiting for someone to tell me, ‘Yeah, I used to be a fruit picker until all those illegals showed up.”
Again, I’m aghast at the idea that it’s OK for people who are beneath us to cross the border illegally because they will do the work we find beneath us.
There are plenty more examples, but these two show that our government has gone from of the people, by the people and for the people to something like by the government for the government, and us poor, misguided citizens just need to suck it up, know what’s good for us and foot the bill.
That kind of arrogance has festered at just about every level of government — that the elected become the elite and through the power of the ballot know what’s best for us, and I’m not sure that one election will turn that ship around.
Leadership certainly matters, but a president only sets, or tries to, the tone for the government, but the actual work is done through the bureaucracy, fed by the laws passed and ultimately held up by Congress and the courts.
And turning that ship around will take more than a leader. It will take all of us forcing a sea change on our leadership.
<i>Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He can be reached at <a href="tony@polkcountypublishing.com">tony@polkcountypublishing.com</a>.</i>
