Be Happy

I have been trying to work out the republican strategy for America, if there is one. It has been a tough slog, but I think I’m approaching an approximation.

First, of course would be, what is their long range goal? Well, one goal seems to be the elimination of the middle class. That is the biggie, but there may be others, for example, securing the wealth of the 0.1%, their owners.

Now, on the middle class, what created the middle class? Because, if you’re going to eliminate that class, it would be helpful to know what created it. First and foremost, I would guess is the public school system. Yep, give everyone a pretty good education and they will begin learning how to cope, building a better economic life for themselves.  So, the first target should be the public school system.  So, how are we doing on that, and what might be the strategic approach to its elimination?

Well, the first thing would be to create some kind of chaos in that system, to get parents all up in arms. So, first, you freeze or even reduce the salaries of teachers, making the teachers unhappy—hopefully unhappy enough to leave. Over a couple of years, you begin to see the system crumbling—see Charlotte-Mecklinburg under Dr. Pete and his clone Mr. Morrisson.  Suddenly, a system that was pretty well respected with schools ranked high nationally (see Myers Park) suddenly dropping into the toilet of rankings.

Little by little, you begin to see parents becoming unhappy with that system. But, and this is a big BUT . . . most parents can’t afford to send their kids to private schools. What to do, what to do? Well, I’ve got it, you create a system of fake public schools and pretend they’re like private schools, and you call them “charter schools”.  Yeah, so first, the new system of fake public schools.

What’s next? Well, the fake publics—the charters—begin to fail, as they would inevitably. You know, they have unqualified faculty and little in the way of facilities, no libraries, or gyms, and stuff.  So, the parents continue to be unhappy.

Now, the next step is true genius. You create fake charter schools—yeah . . . for-profit, on-line “charters”.  And you begin to send the kids to these fake-fake publics.  Well, actually, you don’t send them anywhere. They just stay at home and go on-line.  So, no big facilities, few “teachers”, lower costs.   Then, next step, how to grade? Well, you subdivide the kids by zip code. You rate each zip code by average income level, and you adopt a grading curve system. And you just assign grades randomly, using the zip code income levels as the guiding principle—with the upper income zips getting the higher grades.

Then, onto the next stage. As parents become even more fed up with the on-line system, you return to  . . . TEXTBOOKS. Yeah, you create a new textbook publishing firm that makes textbooks that will guide the kids while at home—home schooling is now the last option.  And you create a text book for each grade—Fourth Grade is a textbook.  And the kids have to read it, and send in their work—yeah, you require work—to a central place—actually to the same folks who created the textbooks. Then you use the same zip code grading system . . . so kids won’t get confused.

Finally, the last stage, you adopt a fully libertarian (see Rand Paul) education system. All parents are free to educate their kids however they please (sort of like the republican strategy for vaccination, hand washing and other public health issues).

Folks might become a little annoyed at the fact that their kids can’t read, or they don’t really know anything, but you can then point out that their kids are just like the college kids who play football and basketball.  See, it’s like their kids are already in college. Wow, dazzling.

And, then like allowing a thousand flowers to bloom, each family will grow and prosper as it wishes. If they don’t wish to prosper, that’s their choice.  The perfect society.

So, let a thousand flowers bloom folks. The republicans have decreed that everyone should be happy.

Let it be so.

And it was so.