Why are we so fuckin' stupid?

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Simple really. And, if you seriously think about it, all of the problems we bitch about wanting change for can all be made at least less of an issue if we were more intelligent.

Remember, intelligent and smart are two different things.

Everyday I get home from work I have the same startling revelation, it would make a good T-Shirt slogan really. "Getting more and more reasons to Hate Humanity Everyday". Everyday I talk with people that have absolutely NO common sense or a complete disregard for anybody else's needs or safety. If you run a Stop Sign, you take the chance that you might slam into a child on a bike or careless pedestrian. So, why do it? Because your running a little late for work? Maybe you're just a little too important to be bothered by a stop sign. Either way if even a little thought was given to the consequences of our actions before doing things we could all avoid a lot of stress and grief.

Every failing marriage I have EVER watched collapse was due to one really simple ingredient. At least one of those involved cared more about their own needs than the needs of their spouses or family. I have said this before, the secret to a successful marriage seems to be growing out of the selfish, "What can they do for me" and into, "What can I do for them".

I was raised with a Sunday School axiom, "Be sure your sins will find you out". That's a subtle way of reminding people that what goes around comes around. If near 15 years of law enforcement has taught me anything it's this, God is a HUGE believer in Karma and Poetic Justice. 

Trouble is that most people don't have the self-awareness or logical capability to be able to look at issues three-dimensionally. They only look at the want and the reward without much thought to the complex interactions that take place in the pursuit of that reward. That's because despite how much we want to believe in a "maturing process", some supernatural thing that just happens all of the sudden when you hit a certain age, it really is only socialization and experience that teaches us acceptable behaviors.

Before anybody of any age can figure that out, they have to be subjected to consequences at the earliest age possible. I don't think there is anything wrong with consequences, after all you can't avoid them. Living equals living with consequences. Without consequences there would be no drive, the positive outcome of an action is also a consequence. Thanks to a happy-feel-good bullshit social structure, particularly in our educational system, we now only expect good things to come to us. They are so worried about making someone upset that they try and teach children that nothing is their fault or failure. To fail is not something that children are expected to do. We should rejoice in our failures for they get us closer to learning how to succeed. I don't know who said that, but he was a fucking genius. We learn more through failure than we do through success. After all, you can succeed by accident, failure is an unavoidably perfect result. You now know at least THAT method won't work.

So, why then is the educational system seemingly trying to self-destruct? Two things: Lawsuits and Money (and they are both related). The Districts are law-suit shy because it costs them money. Our country is very litigious. We sue for the smallest inconvenience. So, my kids failing is he? He's being suspended is he? Well, I'm suing you because obviously MY perfect child can do no wrong".

Time for a story, a heartwarming tale of realization. It is seldom you get to witness someone else's "eureka" moment, that point in time where reality smacks them right in the face. In this case, it was quite literal. I had just arrested a 15-year-old girl for violating curfew, illegal consumption of alcohol and disorderly conduct. The disorderly conduct was based on this 15-year-old girl trying to fight me (5'8" 200# [at the time anyway] and armed to the teeth). Anyway, I had her handcuffed and in the back of my patrol unit. Then her mother pulls up in her car, she got a phone call from one of the other girls her daughter was hanging out with. The mom immediately starts accusing me of being in the wrong. Despite the strong stench of alcohol in the air, it couldn't possibly be from her daughter, despite the bottle of alcohol I HAD SEEN HER DRINK OUT OF, I had to be lying and HER daughter wouldn't EVER fight anybody. Keep in mind that this is not the first time that her daughter had been arrested. Right about this time her daughter, who is screaming her lungs out in the back seat, lies down and starts kicking at the rear side-door window of my patrol unit. I yell at her to stop. Her mother yells at me to not "Talk to her baby that way". So, mom leans towards the car and is trying to say, "Sweety, don't do that". She gets halfway through the word ..do.. when her daughter shatters the auto glass and sends little squared off bits of tempered glass all over her moms face and hair. Mom screams and jumps back, I tell her, "I may have to spray her with pepper spray if she doesn't stop kicking at me". Mom looks at me and says, "Do it!!"

And the truth shall set you free. Mom went from "My baby would never do that" to "Spray her with Pepper Spray" in a nano-second. After it was all said and done I got an apology from the mother and was asked what they needed to do to change their daughters apparently out of control behavior.

Plus, the daughter learned something too, you can scream at your mom but fuck with the police and get peppered. After that, I never even had to raise my voice at her. All I had to do was say, "Do this or I will do this" and Ta-Da, she'd comply.

Miracles, they happen everyday.

Back in the day, my Great-Grandmother only achieved an 8th Grade education. Fortunately for her making it to the 8th Grade "only" resulted in her ability to read and write in Greek and Latin, learn mathematics in algebra and geometry so well she could do it in her sleep and speak with complete sentences and fully comprehensible subject matter. She became a teacher herself and was one of he most reasonable and intelligent people I knew. Why did she learn so much? Genetics, maybe but she wasn't exactly from a family of Rhodes Scholars. Most were dirt farmers with little education aside from what they needed. Nope, it was Consequences.

She used to get up at 4 am. Not because she had such a long walk to school but because she had chores to do before being allowed to go to school. School used to be considered a necessary privilege. You need an education but they weren't going to waste their efforts on someone disinterested in education, not when there was so much manual labor needed. Her chores weren't the "straighten your room, take out  the garbage" chores either. She lived on a farm. She had to collect eggs for breakfast then, according to her, she had to then milk one of the dairy cows they kept and then help her mother cook while her brothers helped her father with the heavier chores. There was constant work being done. If you weren't in school, you were working, HARD!

Not that school was a picnic. They were harsh. Learn and stay, fail and go home. Disobedience and disruption were NOT tolerated and punishments were swift and public. There is value in trying to do right when doing wrong is immediately punished. The reason punishments were so harsh and immediate because life used to be harsh and immediate. The easier life got the more we got easy. The generation that grew up in the Depression and survived WW2 decided that their kids were going to have the easy care-free life they had craved but couldn't have. The result, Baby-Boomers. Their kids grew up in the 50's and ended up being the free-love morons in the 60's. That liberal environment led to some rather hedonistic ideals about life and some stupid and unrealistic thoughts on humanity and raising kids.

The result of smoking WAY too much pot apparently was the notion that humanity was intrinsically good. We were born good because nature was good. We only turned out bad when we were screwed up by an unhealthy environment. This is ludicrous. How the hell they jibe this with how selfish and bad an infant is I will never know but they soldiered on. Because of the "Liberal Arts" educations that a lot of 80's and 90's era "educators" received, they tried to apply this way of thinking to teaching. When I was substitute teaching I learned a few things. Those lessons were reinforced while listening to my wife (a learning disabilities teacher) talk about some of the things they had to do with the kids. "Educators" (they aren't teachers anymore) believe that kids want to learn; kids don't fail, they are failed; kids have trouble learning because of a stressful environment; stress is caused by competition; grades are a form of competition; grades should be modified to lessen the stress to make learning more "fun" and therefore more attractive; kids shouldn't be left behind for failing to comprehend the material because it will also cause damage to their self-esteem and lead them to a failure mentality; kids who have behavioral issues can be corrected by positive reinforcement or medication.

After all, a kid who flunks out or drops out of school CAN'T BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS AND REDUCES THE AMOUNT OF FEDERAL FUNDING RECEIVED.

This isn't all, they have made "Teaching Johnny How to Read" so fucking complex and convoluted that it's no wonder people get shuffled through. The result of all this beurocracy is that kids graduating today are smart about some things but completely ignorant about how to get through the rest of their lives without some kind of help.

Only trouble is that outside of the halls of academia the world doesn't give a flip-flyin-FUCK about you or your happiness. The real world wants results from your ass. If you can't DO the job then you shouldn't HAVE the job. No job, No money.

You used to be able to rely on some menial labor jobs like construction or some moderately skilled jobs like textiles or assembly line type factory employment. These were good careers that generations of Americans raised families on. The pay was reasonable considering the task and it had benefits. At first Unions helped to ensure that the employees they represented were taken care of reasonably. Hours can't be too long because it's unhealthy, breaks were needed to rest the mind, benefits were needed because a sick worker can't work and a worker worried about his families health is less efficient.

All of this stuff made sense. It was good for the employees, it was good for business and despite some theatrical negotiations it eventually created a neutrally satisfying workplace.

Like all beurocracies, Unions got bored. They had solved some serious problems but they were still collecting dues. To justify those dues, they needed to do something so, they had to get creative and started firing people up for stupid shit. When the businesses starting saying no, the Unions would mobilize strikes. Striking used to be a good tool when working conditions were shit and the businesses were only worried about profits and the population didn't exactly have a shit-load of labor waiting to take over those jobs. Now, a strike only pisses the corporations off and make them start looking for plane tickets.

Why the fuck does a guy standing on an assembly line repeating the same fucking three tasks for 8 hours needs 60k annual? I know the work is risky, I know that repetitive tasks have some health issues, BUT when your job is the type that can be easily replaced by a machine or third-world labor, you might want to consider being happy that you have a fuckin job at all. Because now those jobs are GONE.

Don't start corporate bashing. Once again, the business of America IS Business. You can't have a profit centered economy without a profit being generated. You can't have a free-market without allowing people to freely do business in a manner that will keep them interested in staying in business and creating jobs for all of you high school drop-outs and college underachievers.

Large corporations started losing their profit potential, American business owners got out or realized that other countries were happy to give them incentives and plenty of labor for much less money per hour. One American dollar an hour doesn't sound like a lot to you and me. But, $1 is a shit-load of money to somebody who didn't have ANY to begin with.

It is getting to the point that we aren't even generating people intelligent enough or selfless enough to even DO those factory jobs.

Young people to earn extra money in the summer OR less-educated adults used to go work on a farm picking fruit. Now, that apparently is beneath them and it's necessary for Central Americans to do it because they are WILLING. Also, and this will make you cringe. The soil in Central and South America is pretty fuckin good. Thanks to NAFTA, it may get to the point to where it will be cheaper to grow AND cultivate AND harvest the food crops OUSTIDE of the United States and then just ship it here. That is at least until we cease to be a relevant culture.

America CANNOT be a consumer based economy. We won't survive doing that. The fastest growing jobs in the US are technology fields (also moving overseas) and sevice industries. Would you like fries with that?

We are consuming at an alarming rate without really generating anything tangible to justify our wealth. In a balanced economy one business creates several other businesses designed to provide each others needs.

America used to be THE provider to the world. The rest of the world needed us to exist. We supported whole other economies and also provided the food. They only respected us and put up with our shit because they HAD to. Those countries don't need us anymore.

China is one of the worlds fastest growing economies. They don't need us anymore. In a very short time China will replace us as the provider of the worlds economic growth. Central and South America will most likely replace us as the bread-basket. Terra-Farming in regions that used to not produce anything will make it less necessary to rely on somewhere else to grow your food.

If a teenager can grow a 6+ foot tropical plant in his fuckin closet a developing country can grow it's food supply in warehouses.

So our stupidity thanks to our shitty educational system coupled with our lazy good-for-nothing work ethic and sense of entitlement are destroying us and the only thing we can think of when we look at our potential leaders is, "what can you do for ME?"

We deserve the impending consequences.