Bring Back Civics

Even though Trump is older than I, his preparatory school clearly didn't have a big focus on civics as mine did, a requirement for graduation. That's sort of odd since it was a military academy in New York and any reasonable person would hope that aspiring military officers or the typical miscreants sent to military academies to learn discipline would be well grounded in civil procedure. That's because the United States emphasizes civil procedure. We don't allow serving officers to be in government (or at least that's the idea) and we distance civil decisions from military decisions (at least that's the idea).

But around the time that we decided to fully democratize our public schools we stopped teaching civics as a requirement for high school graduation. Most people would tell you that the decision was simply to free up space in the high school day for all those hard subjects that students need now but anyone with half a brain can tell you that most high school students don't take those hard subjects. That's supposed to be why we need to import people to take over basic programming and computational jobs at big companies but it is clearly nonsensical from the get go. Apparently we feel so sorry for everyone nowadays that we cannot teach them what their civic responsibilities and duties are and what the government's responsibilities and duties are.

So Trump is ordering the DOJ to do stuff that is entirely outside of his task (seriously, read the Constitution for what the office is supposed to do), and in the process deliberately destroying what little faith anyone had in government. There were clear indications early in the election cycle that some folks in Trump's inner circle were at the very least being seriously loose lipped about stuff that should not be bandied about in bars. That's how one of Trump's people, one on his payroll, was reported by an Australian man who overheard a conversation in a bar about Russian information about Hillary Clinton. That Trump person, who took the money from Trump, has already pleaded guilty to federal charges.

So the Australian fellow reported the conversation to the appropriate authorities who reported it to the US intelligence services who decided that these folks needed some sort of observation. Anyone with half a brain would agree with that decision, but Trump is now crowing that Obama inserted a "spy" in his campaign, rather than displaying any sort of remorse or chagrin and admitting that a whole cadre of folks that he paid were more used to the NY property development market than the serious business of protecting the country, preserving government integrity, and defending the country from foreign influence.

If you still think Trump is a great guy, you need to sign up for a civics class. If you still think the country will be better off with him, you need to enlist in the military. Life is not a reality show. I hope someone tells Trump that he is not in a ratings war.

I am working on the final border section of the magnum opus. I hope to be quilting before July rolls in to view.