Avsnitt
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French philosopher and statesman Joseph de Maistre is credited with saying it first: “Every country has the government it deserves.” In America, we more often credit the sentiment to Thomas Jefferson, who specifically said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”
Ouch. Regardless of the version or the originator, it hurts more than usual on this Primary Election Day in Indiana. It’s designated as a state holiday, for all of the civic reasons that theoretically make sense. This year however, Hoosiers need to celebrate the end of the preseason, the undercard, the opening act that no one wants to watch at the overpriced concert.
Do we really “deserve” this? Sadly, I must concede that we do. As much as I have made fun of the Republican primary campaigns this year being about nothing, there actually is some value hidden in the noise. It’s telling us some hard truths about ourselves.
One truth is that the campaigns I have viewed in central Indiana do not differentiate themselves in any meaningful way on the issue of governing. Writing down that “governing” is an “issue” being inadequately addressed in any campaign for public office is, well, a problem.
Amazingly, the marketplace of ideas, has produced almost no actual ideas. It’s easy to point at campaigns and complain that they aren’t delivering what we, the voters, want. But in markets, supply and demand respond to one another. To summarize, we aren’t demanding enough.
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When the news broke last year that heavy metal band, Judas Priest, was coming to town for an April concert I took charge and bought reserved seats up front. When I saw them first in 1984, metal bands didn’t even sell reserved seats, we had to fight for them. That was part of the fun.
I don’t listen to metal much anymore, but I loudly have for the last month in prep for Sunday night’s show. I’ve been head bangin’ in the gym, making other old people nervous, and sporadically yelling out anthems from my youth that just sound wrong coming from the mouth of someone my age.
Last week, the school year ended for me and my students. My classes are a lot of work, so there’s plenty to celebrate when we’re through. But I can feel myself missing them even before they’ve left campus for the summer. I’ll recover when “my” kids come back for the fall, and when Indiana University gives me a hundred more. I know I’ll love the newbies, before we’ve even met.
My favorite high school teacher was Kreg Battles. He taught chemistry, a subject that has occasionally helped me on Jeopardy, and no place else. But I wasn’t really taking chemistry. I was taking Mr. Battles’ class, and he just happened to teach chemistry. He was a metal head, like my crowd was, and that made him one of us.
In 2010, he and I finally got to go to a concert together. That concert? Judas Priest. I asked him that night how he taught that awful subject all those years. Didn’t it get old? He laughed and said, “the students are new every year.”
Now as a new teacher myself, I can attest that the newness is not some little thing. It’s filled with wonder, optimism and excitement. And it’s contagious.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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It’s more than math. I have had this conversation many times over the years with a variety of people, and I have been surprised by their surprise almost every time.
Whichever party is drawing the maps of legislative districts, of any kind, they draw them to benefit themselves of course. That part is math, very basic math. In Indiana, Republicans in the Statehouse have drawn the last two maps that determine the House, Senate and Congressional districts. And they have served themselves up a lovely matrix of sweetheart deals.
Last week, James Briggs of the Indianapolis Star wrote a column full of news in it about Senator David Niezgodski, a Democrat from South Bend, who has been accused of sexually harassing a former employee in 2017. The premise in Briggs’ column is that Democrats “maintained a breathtaking lack of curiosity” about the accusations since they first surfaced several years ago. While I primarily agree, I contend the situation is lacking in systemic ways too.
Personally, I’m not curious about the accusations. I believe them entirely. But what is the remedy? In a word, elections. There hasn’t been a long line of candidates pining for the chance to replace Niezgodski. Or any line at all. In his first reelection run in 2020, he was unopposed. I guess the party could have tried to find another candidate that year, but that’s not as easy as one might think.
Why would any Democrat want his job? Who wants a career of certain defeat on every ideological issue for the entirety of that career? Back to that “conversation” I’ve had so many times.
Gerrymandering in Indiana has created lopsided representation in the Statehouse. We talk about the math all the time, without talking deeply enough about the math’s impact. There are currently 40 Democrat members of the 150 available in the Indiana General Assembly. All of them should be applauded for serving at all.
It takes an unusual amount of patience and tolerance to endure life in what is supposed to be a deliberative body but is now overpopulated with a supermajority made up of unpersuadable people. It also takes an unusual amount of talent to successfully manage through it or overcome it to deliver positive results for one’s constituency. I wrote about two members who have that talent a few weeks ago, Sens. Andrea Hunley and Shelli Yoder. There are others. In the House, Blake Johnson and Carey Hamilton come to mind.
The job, as it currently exists, is profoundly unattractive. What it leads to is a reluctance to run, just like it leads to a reluctance to vote.
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On Thursday, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita solicited the public to sue the Indiana Department of Health. I know that sounds odd, and it should sound that way, because it is odd. The IDOH is Rokita’s client.
When an agency is sued, it’s customary for the attorney general to provide legal resources for its defense. Apparently not anymore. Not only should we expect Rokita to refuse to defend the IDOH if it gets sued over its handling of terminated pregnancy reports, but the AG is actively encouraging someone to file the suit. Again, against his own client.
Words can’t describe how unlawyerly that is. It’s a foundational violation of his oath.
He accused the agency and Indiana Public Access Counselor, Luke Britt, of “collusion” for keeping terminated pregnancy reports, or TPRs, from public view. It appears that Rokita has appointed himself the abortion czar of the state and wants to use these medical records in his search for violators of the state’s new ban. This isn’t the reason the data is collected, and the data is viewed by the agency and Britt as medical records protected by the provider-patient relationship.
Ironically, Rokita manipulated the Medical Licensing Board into sanctioning Dr. Caitlin Bernard for allegedly disclosing information about a 10-year-old rape victim who needed an abortion in 2022. He was mad she shared such a vivid example of how bans are bad. Then he worked overtime to find an angle, and importantly, a politically friendly venue, to settle his score with her. His legal claim: Dr. Bernard shared too much information. Now, Rokita wants to share more.
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Standing on the 17th tee on Saturday, England’s Lottie Woad was one shot behind American golfer, Bailey Shoemaker in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Shoemaker had finished her bogey-free 66 about an hour earlier and was staying loose on the range in case anyone caught her, and a playoff became necessary.
Woad coolly birdied 17 and 18 for the comeback victory. And when I say cool, I mean it. I found myself standing in front of my TV as she made the winner. The gallery around the final hole was enormous, exploding as the ball fell.
Something is happening in the world of sports. Finally. And thankfully, there is no turning back.
I watched more women’s college basketball than men’s this year. My transition started a few years ago when some high school friends of mine had an all-star daughter commit to play for Teri Moren at IU. She was good. The whole team was good. And the program has grown into something great.
Then came February 22nd of this year. I wanted to see IU play Iowa and Caitlin Clark in Bloomington. The cheapest tickets on the secondary market were going for $125 a piece for an unreserved seat on a Thursday night. Students waited outside for hours to get in, and I just got lucky. A friend got me a seat in the bleachers behind the basket. Watching the beatdown our Hoosiers put on them that night is one of the most memorable sporting events of my life. And I’ve been to a Super Bowl.
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In the 1987 film, “Wall Street,” Gordon Gecko famously said, “If you’re not inside, you are outside, okay.” I was impressionable as a young undergraduate when I saw it in the theater that year. Since then, I have firmly believed decisions were only made by the people present in the exclusive room where the next important thing was going to happen.
I still do. Whether the organization is in the world of government or business, entertainment, or athletics, it’s my view that the best leaders are insiders.
So, why do so many political campaigns spend so much energy attempting to create the image that their candidate is an “outsider?” The perceived value of it is a mystery.
First of all, let’s be clear. None of the top candidates for Indiana governor are outsiders. The mere suggestion by any of them is nothing but a ruse. Complicating the weirdness further, being from the outside of government, politics or both, has no value for this specific job, either.
The Office of the Governor in Indiana is structurally weak. Constitutionally, the simple majority to override a veto has made it such throughout history. In 2024 though, the entrenched super-majorities in the legislature have made it even weaker. Not since Mitch Daniels left office twelve years ago has the office been occupied by the unequivocal leader of the party.
None of those running this year will change that. There is no movement growing behind any of them. One of them will prevail in the primary and appear on the ballot this fall, but whoever is inaugurated in January will still be taking orders from the gerrymandered power base on the third floor of the Statehouse. The lack of any energy behind any big idea practically seals that deal.
There really is only one policy proposal that has risen above the harmonious nothingness of this primary battle, and that is Lt. Governor Suzanne Crouch’s pitch to eliminate the state’s income tax. But because the details on how to accomplish it are undeveloped, this innovative idea feels a lot like the campaign promise of a sixth-grade class president candidate promising to end homework. Ironically, this pie-in-the-sky offering comes from the candidate least likely to be called an outsider. Go figure.
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Whenever I find myself baffled by a trend or even a specific decision in the traditional media world, I look to Jay Rosen for his perspective. Rosen is a former editor at the Chicago Tribune and a professor of journalism at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
He’s risen in prominence recently as a result of his “it’s not the odds, it’s the stakes” advice he has given the media on how to cover the 2024 elections. What he means by this is the coverage should be grounded in what the November choices mean, not the daily drama of polls, gotcha moments and the scoreboard.
Consumers of media content should follow his advice too. Too often, consumers forget that we are partners in the market. Never has that been more important.
Late last week, NBC News hired recently ousted Republican National Committee Chairperson, Ronna McDaniel, as a political contributor. The move has caused an avalanche of reaction.
McDaniel has been an election denier since the “Big Lie” was spawned in 2020. She participated and led efforts, particularly in her home state of Michigan, to overturn the results. She still refuses to admit Joe Biden won an election that ultimately wasn’t all that close.
Democrats always cringe when a former, high-ranking Republican lands a gig at a prominent news desk. This one is different though. In honor of Professor Rosen and the spirit of telling it like it is, the most obvious problem with NBC’s decision is this simple: McDaniel is a liar.
The “newsroom” at the network isn’t pleased about this at all. NBC’s own Chuck Todd blasted the hire on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning. He was joined by the Boston Globe’s Kimberly Atkins Stohr, who said McDaniel’s “credibility was shot” over the years, and that “she habitually lied.”
OK. Democrats and journalists are mad. Surely Republicans are happy, right?
Not immediately, they weren’t.
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Sigh. It’s been a little while since the last time the former president went on a rant like the one on Saturday in Dayton, Ohio. It was awful enough to make headlines and to send his sycophants into damage control over what their idol actually meant.
Context is the argument this time, something which Donald Trump has spent his life disconnected from. To help reconnect his actions to a coherent perspective, I would like to make a comparison to help the MAGA cult see their way through it.
Larry Flynt was a pioneer, I guess, in the world of pornography during the 1970’s and 1980’s, as the publisher of Hustler Magazine. What was Flynt’s differentiator? That he was willing to go further, more provocatively, more dangerously than Playboy and Penthouse were willing to go at the time. Then in November of 1972, he got his big break when he acquired sunbathing photos of former first lady, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and he was willing to publish them.
His smut magazine sales went from a few thousand to over 2 million. I imagine it was a bloodbath at the Playboy Mansion that quarter. Hugh Hefner couldn’t have liked finishing second.
“Bloodbath” is a provocative word, one that should be reserved for only the most extreme circumstances. Dictionary.com defines it first as, “a ruthless slaughter of a great number of people; massacre,” and second as, “a period of disastrous loss or reversal.” I like visually powerful words too, but I know what they mean.
In Saturday’s rant, while showing Ohio Republicans that neither he, nor they, know how tariffs work, Trump proposed a 100% tariff on Chinese auto imports. The crowd cheered. I never thought I would see a gathering of Republicans delight in approval of a historic, enormous tax increase on themselves. Now I have.
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It can be tough to be a minority of any kind. We talk about that toughness in cultural terms regularly in America. Whether it is a minority religion, gender or race, being outnumbered is rarely meaningless or easy.
Senate Democrats in Indiana would love to be in that standard minority. Their minority isn’t standard though, it’s “super.” Being in a simple minority would feel like a luxury, like upgrading to first class on a flight, or into a high-roller suite in the penthouse of a resort on the Vegas strip. Life in the super-minority is viewed as a thankless, and often times, even a valueless endeavor. The caucus is often described as one that doesn’t matter at all.
Those descriptions are incorrect. And there are receipts to prove it.
Sen. Andrea Hunley is my senator. I vividly remember her first campaign for the seat in 2022. Why? Because when I was listening to her speak to a small group of people that spring, I was overcome with the thought, “she’s too good for that place and being there is going to drive her nuts.” I stand by the first point but was dead wrong about the second.
On March 5th, I accidentally caught Hunley in action. While speaking on the Senate floor on House Bill 1093, a bill to relax child labor laws, she delivered a speech worthy of a title. I would title it with the question she asked from the start. She said, “Who stands to benefit? I know for certain it’s not our kids…When I first ran for office, I ran because of children. I ran because of my work with them.” She was a teacher and principal for twenty years, most recently at the Center for Inquiry in my neighborhood.
The majority ignored her questions and concerns and passed the bill on a party line vote. This was the kind of thing I was predicting for her two years ago. She was destined to be on the right side of policies only to be outvoted by a majority that runs like a zombie experiencing a shortage of brains to eat. But Hunley marches on, undeterred by her lopsided surroundings.
Senator Shelli Yoder was elected two years earlier in 2020. She represents Bloomington and is an award-winning educator at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, where I also teach. She primarily teaches freshmen, and I now teach sophomores, some who have been taught by her, so I can personally vouch for her excellence in the classroom.
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When paying close attention to the things politicians actually say, there are moments when their true character unmistakably shines through. The memorable comments and quips are often material for statues and memorials. Successful politicians fight the urge to be blunt because of the historical danger bluntness brings. Thankfully, eventually most lose that challenging inner battle.
Last Thursday, Sen. Mike Braun lost that battle. In an interview with Fox News anchor, Maria Bartiromo, she asked the Indiana gubernatorial candidate for his thoughts on how Sen. Mitch McConnell should handle his leadership transition. Braun said he thought McConnell needed to endorse the Trump campaign with this motivational advice: “Don’t fight it, you gotta go along with it.”
Sort of gives a person goose bumps, doesn’t it?
I’m reminded of other great oratorical moments from our leaders. Words that moved people, inspired us, or provided great clarity in times of uncertainty or strife.
“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself,” from President Franklin Roosevelt comes to mind. Those were big words at a big moment.
“It’s not what your country can do for you, it’s what you can do for your country,” struck a nerve when President John F. Kennedy said it.
When I walk by the statue of President Benjamin Harrison in downtown Indianapolis, I am always drawn to his quote etched into the base: “Great lives do not go out; they go on.” That may have inspired the Celine Dion song, “My Heart Will Go On.”
More goose bumps.
Being a follower never inspires. Don’t get me wrong, followers are vital to humanity. Where would we be without them? Let’s face it, all of us spend most of our time following. But all of us aren’t running for governor. All of us aren’t in the U.S. Senate. Those are jobs reserved for leaders.
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I am in the business of words. Few people choose a career path that leads to regular debates about whether the use of words like “moreover” or “furthermore” read like the connection of one scolding to another. Even fewer of us enjoy those debates as much as I do.
Senate Bill 202, legislation now on the floor of the Indiana House of Representatives, is an attempt to make public universities more welcoming to those with conservative views. That’s a difficult task for obvious reasons. First, the strained solution that Senator Spencer Deery, a Republican from Tippecanoe County, has developed in this bill presumes there is a problem. I disagree on that foundational point. Second, he believes the legislature can solve this perceived problem. And that is pure comedy.
The bill relies on Deery’s desire for “intellectual diversity” at Indiana’s public universities. Not familiar with that term? I wasn’t either. When I first read it, I thought it meant “the differences between smart people and stupid people.” After a weekend exercise in amateur lexicology, I have failed in disproving my original interpretation.
In my exercise, I first dissected the term and evaluated what the words mean separately to determine what they must mean together. According to Dictionary.com, “intellectual” means, in part: “the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge.” “Diversity” means, “difference; unlikeness; variety.” Put them together and the term must then mean, “the differences in the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge,” right?
My original interpretation survives.
We should put that exercise aside though. That’s not what the Indiana General Assembly means when they use the term in 2024. What they mean is “ideological diversity,” but for some strange reason, they won’t say what they mean. Why not?
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I was inspired to read David Brooks’ latest book, “How to Know a Person, The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen,” when it came out last fall. I was drawn to it because of a comment a former student made to me around the same time.
She said, “I was surprised to find out that your speech class gave me confidence in conversations that used to make me uncomfortable.” Teachers love hearing things like that—a student got some value out of a class that wasn’t even assigned! Admittedly, I teach conversationally, a luxury of smaller class sizes. I warn all of my students on the first day: “I’m going to get to know you better than your other professors do, and you’re going to get to know me too.”
In “How to Know a Person,” the book’s lofty goals can be achieved through a commitment to having better conversations. Not easier, or more entertaining conversations, but better. And yes, I often found myself nodding as I read it.
John Dickerson wrote for CBS News, “The book's thesis is that while human relations are hard, the skills can be taught, and if people can improve their one-on-one interactions – in listening, in conversation, and in what Brooks calls the ‘close at hand’ – it might have a compounding effect on society.”
I often read Brooks’ columns, not because I agree with him, though I sometimes do. It’s because I have always liked the way he writes, and this book is no exception.
Chapter 7, “The Right Questions,” describes a series of methods to improve our connections with each other. He writes that about 30% of us are natural questioners, leaving 70% who are not. And while the latter group can be charming people, “they spend their conversational time presenting themselves.” He adds, “Sometimes I will be walking out of a party and realize that whole time no one asked me a single question.” To me, that’s a bad party. As I have studied communication and worked to teach it better, I’ve concluded this disconnection problem is solvable.
Which brings me to some sort-of-conversations provoked by my column last week. I never know which installments will get around or strike a chord, but this one did, inspiring some feedback.
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The “Jesus, He Gets Us” folks made a splash during the Super Bowl on Sunday with their commercial about how “Jesus didn’t teach hate, he washed feet.” I don’t get what their intended return is for that kind of investment, but as far as commercials go, I liked that one as much as any of them this year. The “love your neighbor” messages never get old. To me, anyway.
In the last week, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for president has said many troubling things. But what makes them most problematic is that there is no one left in the GOP to object anymore. For Donald Trump to keep his angry and loyal following whipped up into their frenzied mania, he must keep escalating his rhetoric, or they will lose interest. It’s a predictable process.
First, he threatened to mobilize military forces to round up millions of undocumented migrants for deportation. According to Axios, not since Eisenhower has such a thing been pursued, and thankfully, that was a far different time.
Next, he mocked his Republican opponent, Nikki Haley, for her husband being absent from the campaign trail. Never mind that Trump and his wife, Melania, have only been seen together at her mother’s funeral during the last several months. Maj. Michael Haley is on a yearlong deployment with the South Carolina National Guard in Africa. There was a time when that kind of un-American mockery would turn off Republican voters.
Finally, nothing would have sickened Reagan Republicans more than taunting members of NATO. With what? With the threat of inviting Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any non-dues-paying members of what Trump apparently believes is a Mar-A-Lago-style country club.
In today’s Republican party, an angry voter base is everything. But most people tire of being mad and need refueled on a regular basis. Feeding the desire for grievance is of paramount importance.
Buddhism’s Second Noble Truth states that the cause of suffering is craving. MAGA world’s insatiable desire for the next angriest idea is that craving.
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“What a long, strange trip it’s been,” said that historic and influential musician, Jerry Garcia. It’s astonishing to me that I never fell victim to the evil spell the Grateful Dead cast on so many people over the last fifty years. I have a number of Dead Head friends myself. Lawyers, bankers, you know, the usual folks.
Maybe, just maybe when Neil Young was making hits with songs like “Ohio,” when he sang, “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming…” all of the young voters within earshot would temporarily become deaf. But that’s not how I remember Young’s moment on top when my older siblings were still at home.
This 2020’s version of the uncool among us trying to demonize an idol of the cool kids’ club was inevitable. Seriously, though, it’s hard to demonize Taylor Swift. Historians will probably come up with other examples, but I can’t ever recall objectors to the outsize influence of a popular music star over our youth losing the battle so embarrassingly. The “conservative” bunch are mad at someone more pure, more well-behaved, and simply more good than any of them. And by anyone’s measure, including their own.
I realize how dumb that sounds, and trust me, I feel dumber just writing it out. But the above descriptive is where a good chunk of America is when asked that profoundly transformative question: “What do you think about Taylor and Travis?”
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“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” is an adage that is widely attributed to Winston Churchill as the one who said it first. Crediting him with quotes like this is easy to do and difficult to disprove. It sounds like something he would say, right?
We know Rahm Emmanuel said it on November 19, 2008, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, as then President-elect Barak Obama’s chief of staff. I have the video! His point was a crisis can often create “an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
America’s southern border is in crisis. The intensity of it is as hot as it has ever been, though by my measure, there has never been a time in my life when it wasn’t a crisis. Also, by my measure, few Americans have even an elementary understanding of it, a sort of willful ignorance that allows recent politics to make sense.
On Thursday, all but one Republican governor in America issued a joint statement in support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott in his battle with the federal government for authority he doesn’t have. Governor Eric Holcomb joined the group, stating, "Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.”
Of course! Why shouldn’t Texas be able to defend itself when the federal government won’t? There’s language in the U.S. Constitution that specifically allows that, after all.
The answer: That’s not what the dispute is about.
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Representative government in Indiana will look drastically different next year. Or will it?
Four of the state’s nine U.S. House members from Indiana will not seek reelection this year. Districts currently represented by Reps. Larry Buschon, Jim Banks, Greg Pence, and Victoria Spartz will all get new House members next year. The question is: How will that matter?
None of these departing members spent any time, to quote “Hamilton,” in “The Room Where It Happens.” None chaired a committee or were on track to do so. I consume an abundance of national media on Washington politics, and only in the rarest of circumstances would any of these soon-to-be retirees appear there.
Now, media appearance frequency is no way to measure value, but extended periods of radio silence should cause people back home to wonder: Is my representative representing me?
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For nearly half my life, I have had my eye on the Indiana General Assembly. Looking back on all the things I could have watched during the bulk of the last three decades, I’m deeply saddened by the choice I made. I could have chosen sunsets, priceless art, or what social media now knows is a favorite in my house, Golden Retriever and Dachshund videos.
But not Hound Dogs. Nope. The best thing about a hound dog is the song. And that one isn’t flattering either. Even when The King himself sang it.
Rep. Bruce Borders, R-Jasonville, is famously known in Indiana politics as an Elvis impersonator, a tragically embarrassing vocation. Now, I love Presley as much as anyone, but imitating him should be limited to the privacy of one’s shower. Those doing it in public are likely to do other dumb things. Like file House Bill 1334.
To quote this masterpiece, HB 1334 actually says: “An employer may require an immunization only if the employer respects the employee's right to refuse an immunization.” No, that’s not edited. No, I took no dramatic or creative freedoms with the actual words on the paper.
In case any employer or contractor out there is curious whether this innovative policy idea applies to them, the answer is yes. Unless, drum roll, you are the federal government. It turns out the Indiana legislature is not the boss of them.
Something that could make this mess of a bill seem sane would be comparing it to Senate Bill 187, filed by Senator Gary Byrne, R-Byrneville. That is also not a typo.
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Another government funding deadline looms in Washington on January 19, precisely two weeks before Groundhog Day. While this Congress has been the least productive in modern history, it has produced multiple versions of the shutdown dance, and other predictable jigs, worthy of being added to Groundhog Day 2.
How has this movie sequel not been made yet? A movie famously about repeating history hasn’t been repeated. Come on Hollywood, how’d you miss this one?
“Shut the border down or we will shut the government down,” was the language several Republicans were using last week on social media platforms, according to Forbes. I came across one of these posts myself, hoping it was an outlier. The problem in the House right now is that the “outliers” have been running it.
Speaker Mike Johnson reached a tentative funding deal with Democrats over the weekend that will not satisfy these outliers, just like the last speaker’s deal didn’t. As reported by PBS News Hour, the spending package doesn’t deeply cut anything and leaves negotiations on funding for Ukraine, Israel and broad border policy changes still to be addressed separately.
If it seems like a status quo deal, it’s because it primarily is one. “It reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring,” President Biden said in response. Democrat leaders in both the Senate and House also gave the deal their approvals.
Outliers, particularly in the House, won’t like this one bit. The only question at the moment is whether they will go along with their new speaker or if they will run Johnson out just like they did Kevin McCarthy last year. Other than the person holding the gavel, I don’t see what has changed.
Except, of course, the most recent absurd negotiation stance about the border. It’s as if the outliers don’t understand that shutting down the government, at some point and by definition, also means handicapping border enforcement. Details are not the specialty of the outliers.
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During my professional career, I’ve said it countless times and in countless ways: perception is reality. Oh, I wish I could take those moments back! Not just because of my awful tendency to weave profanity into my version of the cliché, but because the cliché itself has engulfed far too many of us.
In 2024, the battle between what is real and what is not will be epic.
Yes, yes, it’s a big election year, the latest in a streak of the-most-important-elections-of-our-lifetimes. And nothing strains the perception and reality continuum more than election season. This year, that is practically the entire game.
Let’s talk about the pesky Fourteenth Amendment and other inconvenient laws that will impact the presidential race. The never-ending legal saga of former President Donald Trump is ground zero of the perception versus reality war. His most recent problem of being removed from the ballot in Colorado and Maine has inspired debate and conversation that is straight out of the Twilight Zone.
Too many politicians from both parties are pandering to voters by taking the position that Trump’s quest to return to the White House should be decided solely by the election. Of course, we all agree with the authority of elections, even though Trump and his supporters didn’t agree with it in 2020. Many of them still don’t. But before voters get to decide in any year, candidates must be qualified to hold the office.
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I am one of those people who is difficult to shop for. Modern Christmas, you know, the capitalist part of the holiday, is something that died in me after my children aged out of the Santa Claus years. Don’t get me wrong, those were good times. And those boys got some really cool things that I often enjoyed as much or more than they did.
They weren’t the only ones who aged out though. I’m old enough to have acquired all of the things that I really want, or accepted that possessing some aspirational memento was just not meant to be. So, now a great gift for me might be the offer to take things away. The crap in my garage, for example, take it all!
However, aside from a liberating cleanse of a lifetime’s worth of accumulated junk, there are some invaluable things I want for all of us. I think they’ll help make us better.
I finished Adam Grant’s new book, “Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things,” last week. Dr. Grant is an organizational psychologist, and a tenured professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is that rare someone I discovered on Twitter who makes me think, and more importantly, helps me learn.
This Christmas, I want more of that. Learning, not X.
Take it easy out there. Yes, I am aware that I am already a teacher myself. Also yes, I have learned more since becoming a teacher than I have in any other stretch in my life. Dr. Grant writes about this: that teaching, coaching and mentoring others is often the best way to learn more, or to learn more deeply, or to just learn better.
So, my next Christmas wish: more teaching. I can’t wait to get back to teaching in a couple of weeks. What might I learn?
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- Visa fler
